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  Migrant farmers put huge strain on trains  By Shang Wu (China Daily)  Updated: 2006-02-04 07:13  
 
 The increasing number of farmers from the populous 
Sichuan and Hunan provinces who rush south to Guangdong Province to find jobs 
are exerting heavy pressure on trains, a railway official said on Friday. 
 
 
 
 
   Passengers queue to 
 buy tickets at a railway station in Guiyang, southwest China's Guizhou 
 province, February 3, 2006. The increasing number of farmers who rush to 
 big cities to find jobs are exerting heavy pressure on trains during the 
 Chinese Spring Festival, local railway officials 
 said.[Newsphoto] |    
 
 
Nearly 300,000 passengers arrived Friday 
in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, a southern province that borders Hong 
Kong, according to Ding Liang, an official with the Guangzhou Railway 
Corporation Group. 
 Usually fewer than 100,000 passengers arrive every day in the region. 
 In the past four days, the group added 165 seasonal trains to carry 
passengers from Sichuan in Southwest China and Hunan and Henan in Central China 
to Guangdong, Ding told China Daily. 
 The distance between Guangdong, a magnet for job thirsty farmers elsewhere 
because of its economic strength, and these provinces is more than 1,000 
kilometres, and the train is the most popular means of travel. 
 In Sichuan, more than 7 million local farmers, or 10 per cent of the 
province's total population, work outside the province each year, half of them 
in Guangdong. About 4 million people from Hunan work in Guangdong each year. 
 According to the tradition, Chinese people, especially farmers, usually enjoy 
Spring Festival for 15 days. This year's festival started on January 29. 
 "We hope to find good jobs (in Guangdong) by getting there earlier," said 
farmer Huang Yongguang, who is from Changsha, Hunan's capital. 
 Chengdu Daily, in Sichuan's capital, reported on Friday that the number of 
travelling farmers increased by 40 per cent compared with the same period of 
last year. 
 Local officials in charge of exporting farmers to Guangdong hired chartered 
coaches to transport farmers from their home towns to Chengdu Railway Station, 
the report said. 
 In Guangzhou, Guangdong's capital, labour-intensive factories such as those 
making shoes held job fairs in front of railway stations to attract migrant 
workers.  
  
  
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