GUANGDONG is to overhaul its unemployment insurance scheme to help workers made redundant by cumbersome state firms, a government official said yesterday.
Under the new scheme, expected to be ready later this year, recipients will get more ''realistic'' assistance and workers' contributions will increase, said Long Huisi, acting bureau chief of Guangdong's Social Insurance Bureau.
Now in Hong Kong for a social insurance meeting, Mr Long said that the provincial Government was under tremendous pressure to provide a safety net for the anticipated large number of unemployed as China moved from a cradle-to-grave socialist economy to a market-oriented one.
''State enterprise reform cannot proceed due to the lack of an appropriate [unemployment insurance] system,'' he said.
An overhaul of the already outmoded scheme was urgently needed, Mr Long said.
Effective since 1986, the existing unemployment scheme provides at least two years of protection to laid-off state workers.
