Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said on Monday that 2004 is the first year of a three-year government plan to pay outstanding wages to construction workers.

"Preliminary statistics show by the end of 2003, back payments to construction workers exceeded 360 billion yuan (approximately 43.37 billion US dollars) nationwide. Of this, more than 170 billion yuan (approximately 20.48 billion dollars) were back payments for 124,000 completed projects," said Zeng. "Some of the debts dated back to 10 years ago."

He said serious problems of back payments existed in government-funded projects and real estate projects.

Zeng said settling the issue of back payments is important for safeguarding normal market order and social credit. It will also facilitate the relatively fast, steady and coordinated developmentof the economy.

Zeng asked governments of various levels to basically settle back payments of government-funded projects by the end of 2005. Meanwhile, all localities should strictly control the scale of government-funded projects.

Source: Xinhua