The Ministry of Commerce yesterday warned people to be more careful when hired for jobs overseas after more than 200 Chinese construction workers were cheated by intermediary employment agency and stranded in Romania.

Ding Lichun's son does his homework on a table that is adorned by his father's photograph in Changchun, Jilin province, on Saturday. The boy looks at the photograph whenever he thinks of his father, a construction worker detained by Romanian authorities because his employer and employment agency didn't get his visa renewed. [Chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese workers should be cautious when hired to work in Romania. They should verify the bona fides of intermediary agencies and the information on their Romanian employers before leaving the country, the ministry said in a statement on its website on Monday night.

The Chinese embassy in Romania said the government had stopped construction workers from going to the European country because of low demand and the fact that more than 200 workers were already stranded there, Xinhua reported yesterday.

The embassy said the stranded workers were mainly from Hebei, Jilin and Jiangsu provinces. The global financial crisis has dealt a heavy blow to the construction sector, shrinking the demand for workers.

Zhang He, of Jilin provincial department of labor and social security, said her department and intermediary employment agencies have sent people to Bucharest, the Romanian capital, to help the stranded workers. The department will hold a press conference today to brief journalists about the latest situation.

Li Baoxu, one of the stranded workers, said a Beijing-based intermediary employment agency had promised them work for three to five years in Romania, getting at least 200 working hours a month for an hourly rate 3 euros ($4.2).

Li and his fellow workers were sent to Romania to build a big department store. But to their surprise, their visas expired just six months after they reached that country.

Without valid visas, they became illegal immigrants and could be detained and sent back to China anytime.

The Romanian authorities have already deported four workers to China and detained some of them, the embassy said.

Some media reports over the weekend quoted Ding Lichun, one of the detainees, as having said that he was given two meals a day - half a loaf of bread and some water for each.

Many workers want to return home as soon as possible and demanded that the intermediary agencies refund their fees, the embassy said.

But another worker Xu Fengxi, from Jilin, said the majority of the workers were reluctant to return home because they had not earned enough money compared to the "high fees" they paid to the intermediary employment agencies, Xinhua said.

Xu said they had paid at least 80,000 yuan each to get a job in Romania and that most of them had not yet paid off the money they borrowed to pay the fees.

To avoid being caught and deported for living without valid visas, many of them were forced to live in containers and cowsheds. Some of them survived only on vegetables thrown away by people for some time.

About 140 of the workers are from Jilin province, and the Jilin Zhongjian Intermediary employment agency had organized their trip to Romania.

Calls to the agency were not answered, and sources said the firm had moved out of its registered office.

Ministry of Commerce figures show 794,000 laborers were working in foreign countries at the end of November, 51,000 more than a year ago.

(China Daily December 24, 2008)