(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-29 17:28

GUANGZHOU - Inclement weather has led authorities in south China's Guangdong Province to advise millions of migrants to stay in the cities where they work during the upcoming Spring Festival because they may not be able to complete their journey home.

"Authorities shall persuade migrant workers to postpone homebound journeys and strive to keep more than 65 percent of them in Guangdong during the festival," said a circular issued by the Department of Labor and Social Security in Guangdong, a southern province with 30 million migrant workers.

As part of the effort, the Guangzhou Federation of Trade Unions in this provincial capital has prepared 50 free movie shows for migrants who choose to stay. It also invited 3,000 workers to an evening party along the Zhujiang River during the festival, which falls on February 7.

"We would try to bring festive warmth to make them feel good although they are not with their families," said federation official Yi Lihua.

More than 500,000 railway passengers were stranded in Guangzhou because the southern end of the Beijing-Guangzhou rail line, a north-south trunk railway, has been paralyzed because of heavy snow in the central Hunan Province where power transmission facilities have been knocked out.

A number of trains have been delayed and traffic on the Beijing-Guangzhou line is not likely to be normalized within the next three to five days as snow is persisting in central China.

Railway authorities in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Beijing, Jinan and Kunming have been forced to stop selling tickets and refund passengers. However, most passengers have been reluctant to return their tickets, hoping railway operations would soon resume.

China has about 200 million migrant workers who travel between the cities and their homes in the countryside to celebrate the Spring Festival, a time when Chinese traditionally return to their families, putting huge pressure on the country's transport network.

The Ministry of Railways predicted the country's railways would carry an unprecedented 178.6 million passengers during the travel peak from January 23 to March 2, up from 156 million last year.

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