Shirking of duty is support for illegal deeds

Migrant workers walk out of the Haozhou Railway Station, East China's Anhui province, Jan 18, 2014.[Photo/CFP]

A construction company in Fushun, Northeast China's Liaoning province, reportedly hasn't paid 160 workers their wages since November. The construction project has also operated for over half a year without the necessary approval from the local authorities. That some Fushun officials failed to supervise the illegal project and ignored the workers' request for help to get the money they were owed, highlights their incompetence and "double standard" mentality, says Beijing Times:

What happened to the over 160 migrant workers is not simply about their request for unpaid wages. The currently suspended construction project, which has been illegally operating for more than six months, was included in the local government work report two years in a row (2011 and 2012).

How the project was outsourced to a totally unqualified company, which has apparently managed to bypass the authorities' supervision, remains unclear. Worse still, local labor rights protection authorities, too, gave the workers a difficult time by requiring them to go through so-called legal procedures, instead of helping them get the wages they were owed.

On the one hand, whoever is behind the illegal construction project must be discovered, and held accountable. Therefore, all the departments involved－the local housing bureau, the land and resources bureau, and the urban management bureau－should stop shirking their responsibilities. They are supposed to work closely to root out power-money exchanges and punish those who misbehave.

In particular, the labor rights protection officials need to figure out a better plan to support workers. For instance, migration workers, many of whom are still struggling to collect what they earned due to the lack of legal assistance, should be offered a "green passage" through which they can receive help whenever they are in need.