A government-sponsored training project named "Sunshine Program" has helped 7.2 million Chinese rural laborers find jobs in non-farming sectors since 2004, said Vice Minister of Agriculture Wei Chao'an on Tuesday.

By the end of October this year, 8.3 million rural laborers had taken training courses on work skills in such industries as manufacturing, construction and service, with 86.7 percent of them finding new jobs, said Wei at a symposium in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province.

In 2004, six ministries, including ministries of agriculture, finance and education, launched the Sunshine Program to offer professional training to rural laborers and teach them how to lead urban life and protect their basic rights.

Under the program, each trainee gets a subsidy for training expenses, which stood at 100 yuan (US$12.5) per person in 2004 and rose to 171 yuan this year.

Most of the trained laborers secured job contracts with a term of one year or longer as well as an average monthly payment of 833 yuan. The salary is 200 yuan more than that of untrained rural workers and 400 yuan above that of farmers, according to statistics of 50 counties in 2005.

Over the past three years, the program has received allowances of 1.25 billion yuan from the central government and more than 1.5 billion yuan from governments at the provincial level.

China has 490 million rural laborers, only 13 percent of whom receive education at or above the level of senior middle school.

(Xinhua News Agency November 9, 2006)