China needs a paid holiday system for the migrant workers totaling 150 million, so that they can choose the time for homebound journeys, a lawmaker said Sunday.

"Most migrant workers have to work all the year round and can only have a few days off during the Spring Festival. It becomes a real challenge for the festival transport season when most of them go home at the same time," said Zhu Xueqin, one of the first three migrant workers to have been elected deputies to the National People's Congress, the national legislature.

China's migrant laborers from rural areas power the country's fast-growing economy by working, often far from home, as construction and factory workers, restaurant staff, domestic servants and drivers.

The huge, but usually disadvantaged group, however, face various problems, such as the lack of holiday, workplace injury compensation, health care and their children's schooling in addition to pay arrears.

Millions of such workers had to say "sorry" to their loved ones for failing to going back to their native homes during the past Spring Festival, because of the worst winter in half a century that disrupted traffic and claimed lives.

More than 12 million migrant workers chose to stay put in southern Guangdong Province, which has about 30 million such workers, according to the Guangdong Provincial Department of Labor and Social Security.

Many of the 4 million migrant workers in Shanghai had also been stranded at the railway station before the Spring Festival, said Zhu Xueqin, who works in a clothing company.

Having been to the station twice before the Spring Festival, Zhu said she felt deeply sorry for the workers. "I am a member of them. People who are born and grow up in cities might not understand such a feeling," she said.

Since her election to the national parliament, Zhu has received numerous messages from other migrant workers, who want the NPC deputy to help solve their problems.

"As a representative of migrant workers, I feel duty-bound to speak for them," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2008)