The Ministry of Railways yesterday unveiled a seasonal travel scheme with an extra 319 trains planned, 50 days ahead of the Lunar New Year travel peak.
This will cater to millions of unemployed migrant workers returning home early because of factory closures amid the economic turmoil.
Warning of a 'grim transport situation', railway authorities said more than 188 million people were predicted to travel by rail within a 40-day travel peak starting on January 11. Most would be migrant workers, university students and holidaymakers.
But the authorities, keen to avoid a repeat of the nationwide snarl-up caused by snowstorms in February, could be less busy this year, as many workers have said they would not have jobs to return to.
Economists are predicting that more factories will declare bankruptcies during the holiday period to avoid severance payouts, and that the huge number of laid-off workers forced to return to the countryside could cause social unrest.
The livelihoods of millions of migrant workers and their families from major labour-supplying provinces including Sichuan , Hunan , Hubei , Jiangxi and Anhui are threatened.
Hubei worker You Min , waiting for a train at Shenzhen station, said her factory, which manufactures transformers, had not received orders for the past few months, although the period before Christmas was usually a busy time. It was the first time in a decade that she had gone home this early.
