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SCMP Reporter

MORE than nine million migrant workers will pass through Guangzhou in the upcoming Lunar New Year.

  Foreign travellers are advised to avoid Guangzhou during this time as the Government works around the clock to speed up the traffic.

  According to He Baixing, an official of the city government's office, an emergency meeting was held three weeks ago to discuss the congestion problem.

  Mr He who is a member of the city's Spring Festival Special Transport Committee said other provinces like Hunan, Guangxi, Jiangxi and Fujian have been asked to send in special buses to take their workers home.

  ''Several hundreds of special buses are needed every day to send the workers away now and bring them back to Guangdong after the holiday. This has certainly put great pressure on Guangzhou but we know how to handle the situation after so many years of experience,'' he added.

  To avoid a clash with the migrant workers, the Government has already ordered all universities and colleges to extend their holidays so that the 40,000 students who come from other provinces can go home earlier.

  And to minimise disruption to their work, individual factories are willing to charter special flights early next week to send their workers home.

  According to Mr He, the Government expects more than four million workers to go home via Guangzhou, with the peak period being between this Thursday and Tuesday next week.

  After spending about a week with their families, the same crowd will then return to their work through Guangzhou. which is the main traffic hub in the region. This human tidal wave will again create another heavy burden on the city's transport system.

  For example, the Guangzhou Railway Station, built in the 1960s, will have to handle more than 100,000 passengers a day during this period - at least three times its normal daily volume or 10 times over its designed capacity.

  Mr He admitted that the Government's efforts to speed up the traffic might have been weakened as many ''veteran workers'' were expected to shorten their holidays and return to Guangdong to look for new jobs with better pay.

  Mr He said the Government believed many workers now spent only one or two days with their families and before returning to Guangdong.

  Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of ''blind drifters'' will soon hit the road to search for work in the big cities.

  ''We have already issued documents warning the workers that they should not bring newcomers after the holiday and we will discipline any persons who are found to have violated the rules,'' Mr He said.

  But according to sources in Guangzhou, this employment rule - like many other industrial regulations in the Guangdong - has never been vigorously enforced and many factory owners only pay lip-service to the guidelines.

  ''Many of these drifters are not really 'blind' now,'' said one Guangzhou resident. ''They are organised by their village chieftains who have made deals with the joint venture owners.''   ''This problem of drifters has been accepted as a matter of life in Guangdong.'' 



Guangzhou set for crowds