Set up a wage delay office: adviser

A political adviser in Shanxi province has suggested establishing an office to deal with wage delays of migrant workers.

Staff at the office would be from the local labor force, the construction industry, the police and the judicial department, Wei Zhongping, was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency at the ongoing annual meeting of the province's political advisers on Wednesday.

Wei partly attributed wage delays to complex contracting mechanisms in the construction industry.

Investors authorize contractors to construct a building, and the contractors usually have many sub-contractors beneath them, said Wei, which often causes economic disputes and may result in wage delays.

Lack of coordination among government departments is one of the reasons workers find it hard to ask for delayed payment, according to Wei.

More than 220,000 wage disputes were reported nationwide in 2012, a year-on-year increase of 12.7 percent, according to Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security.