The proposed merger of two ministries in the government's current restructuring will streamline the country's labor market and help ensure social equality, a leading labor expert and lawmaker said yesterday.

The country had previously split the human resource market into "professionals" and "laborers" and offered different salaries and social security policies to them, Zheng Gongcheng, a deputy of the NPC, said.

"The split has affected the flexibility of the labor market, hindered free circulation and led to inequality in social status," Zheng told China Daily on the sidelines of the two annual sessions.

The new Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will absorb the Ministry of Personnel, which manages personnel of government bureaus and State-funded units, and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, which manages workers of enterprises.

Due to differentiated policies being directed at the two groups in the market for decades, the gap between them is getting larger and the whole system should be overhauled and streamlined, Zheng said.

In one instance, the country's 40 million retirees of enterprises have been enjoying far lower pensions than their counterparts previously working with government or State-funded units, the deputy said.

The country had offered to improve pensions for such retirees during the past two years by directing billions of yuan, but the move to address the gap could not be coordinated under separate policy arrangements, Zheng said.

"It has come to a time where the country should put an end to this deliberate split of its vast human resources market, and grant social equality to all working people," Zheng said.

"The new ministry will streamline existing workforces within the two ministries, which will definitely lower cost and improve efficiency," Zheng said.

The merger, however, will not necessarily mean a cut in manpower of the two ministries, Zheng said.

In aiming to provide better social services and strengthening public management in human resources, the new ministry should have more manpower, as this area has been weak for some time when compared with those of developed countries, Zheng said.

As a member of the standing committee of the 10th National People's Congress, Zheng said that the NPC has made progress in its supervision efforts.

"The most evident proof is that the annual budget report for the NPC to discuss is no longer simple but one that has been getting more and more detailed over recent years," Zheng said.

(China Daily March 14, 2008)