A project aiming to improve Chinese girls and young women's abilities to fight trafficking when seeking jobs is going "smoothly" in central China's Henan Province, a local program official said on Sunday.

Vice-Provincial Governor Lu Debin, who is in charge of implementing the Project to Prevent Trafficking in Girls and Young Women for Labor Exploitation within China (CP-TING project), said Henan has set up a steering committee and has worked out concrete measures for implementing the project in the three counties of Qixian, Huaxian and Huiyang. "Everything is going smoothly," Lu said.

Henan is one of five Chinese provinces selected to implement the CP-TING project, launched by the International Labor Organization (ILO) as well as the Chinese Government and non-governmental agencies, implemented in close cooperation with the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), and funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID-China).

The project aims to bar girls and young women from being deceived or lured into sexual exploitation or other unacceptable forms of labor by reducing their vulnerability to trafficking.

Rapid economic growth in China and a huge number of surplus laborers in its rural areas have resulted in massive internal migration in the world's most populous country. In 2003, an estimated 140 million Chinese farmers migrated for work, according to the State Commission for Population and Family Planning.

Though men constitute the majority of the migrant labor force, the percentage of women relocating is quickly rising, especially in the younger age group. This mass movement of such huge numbers of rural surplus laborers has created opportunities for those seeking to exploit those most vulnerable -- girls and young women -- as they often migrate at lower ages than men, and with lower average levels of education, uninformed and ill-prepared.

Henan province "sent" more than 14 million migrant farmers to other places in China last year, approximately six million of whom were female.

The CP-TING project will take measures to prevent trafficking in girls and young women including: promoting their awareness of the risk of migration without access to information and good preparation; reducing the rate of female dropouts under age 16 in order to increase their opportunities in the labor market; proposing to establish a safe and efficient employment channel between "migrant labor force sending and receiving provinces"; protecting all migrant workers' labor rights and assisting them to obtain various social service in the cities.

The CP-TING projects will be carried out in three "sending" provinces of Henan, Anhui and Hunan and two "receiving" provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu in a four-year period from 2004 to 2007.

The DFID-Beijing contributes 18 million yuan (US$2.17 million) for the project and with the remaining funds coming from the Chinese project partners.

(Xinhua News Agency May 15, 2005)