China's top leader Hu Jintao urged the governments and Communist Party of China (CPC) committees at various levels to fully understand the importance of the reemployment issue and to further take concrete measures to tackle it.

Hu, president of the state and general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks at a national symposium on reemployment held here Friday and Saturday.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presided over the symposium and other senior leaders Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju and Li Changchun, all members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, attended the symposium.

The leaders reviewed and summed up experience in reemployment work since last year's national meeting on the same topic and studied ways to solve existing problems to further promote reemployment.

Hu said when addressing the symposium that employment and reemployment of laid-off workers is for the personal interests of the general masses and the overall situation of reform and development.

He urged all levels of the Party and government to fully understand the importance, urgency and long-term presence of the employment and reemployment issue and do concrete work to continuously make new progress in this field.

Hu said that since last year's national meeting on reemployment, the government has enhanced efforts and made much progress. In the first seven months of this year, 3.7 million people were employed and 2.1 million laid-off workers were reemployed despite the negative influence of SARS.

He said that in the present stage and for a long period to come, China still faces a relatively grave employment situation. Yet China also possesses a number of favorable conditions to tackle this issue, including sustained rapid economic growth, improvement in restructuring sectors of the economy and the creation of various pro-employment policies.

Hu said the main policies and measures on reemployment have been laid out and now the key to tackling the issue is to ensure their implementation.

He urged all levels of the Party and the government to concentrate on the following fields:

-- Vigorously creating job opportunities. The fundamental approach of solving the employment and reemployment issue through promoting development should be always maintained. Labor-intensive industries and enterprises should be given a boost.

-- Fully implementing incentive policies to encourage enterprises to absorb laid-off workers and help the laid-off workers find jobs on their own initiative.

-- Increasing capital input for reemployment.

-- Strengthening professional training of laid-off workers.

-- Further improving services to help laid-off workers find new jobs.

-- Helping laid-off workers abandon old-fashioned ideas and choose jobs from a wider field.

-- Ensuring social security for laid-off workers.

Also at the symposium, Premier Wen Jiabao stressed the importance of always making employment and reemployment a priority of the Party and the government. He said that governments at various levels, despite existing difficulties, must strive to fulfill this year's targets and tasks in this field.

Wen stressed that the key to solving the issues at present is the concrete implementation of policies and measures already issued.

He urged leading officials at various levels of the Party and the government to take charge of employment and reemployment work and assume the overall responsibility for the work.

(Xinhua News Agency August 17, 2003)