BEIJING - The Beijing municipal government is looking to increase the number of certified social workers in the city, an official said on Tuesday.

"We will encourage more social workers to take part in the national professional grading test for social work," said Wu Shimin, director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Civil Affairs, on Tuesday.

Wu was speaking at a conference to review social work development in Beijing over the past five years.

According to the website of the social work office under the Beijing government, only 4,235 of the city's more than 30,000 social workers are currently certified.

The municipal government plans to increase this to 30 percent by the year 2020.

"A professional social worker should be trained and pass the professional grading test, but at present most of our social workers are actually volunteers," China Youth Daily quoted Song Guilun, head of the Beijing social work committee, as saying.

In an online survey conducted by China Youth Daily, 75 percent of respondents said social workers were not capable of providing professional help, especially with social welfare, healthcare and legal problems.

"China's successful economic growth over the past three decades has created more spaces for social development, where social work should play a big part," said Wang Sibin, professor in the sociology department of the Peking University.

However, in 2010, nearly 5,000 out of the 12,000 people who applied for positions as social workers in Beijing abandoned the exam.

Guo Aihua, director of the social work department of the Maizidian subdistrict office in Chaoyang district, told China Daily the only social worker they recruited in 2009 left immediately after receiving a permanent residence, or Beijing hukou.

"All the people that applied for the position did not have Beijing hukou. We intended to recruit five people but at last only one came," Guo said. "Now even he has left."

In 2009, the Beijing government started to recruit social workers from college graduates to work for its 4,051 community service stations, which are under subdistrict offices. The government promised to give Beijing hukou to the workers once they finish two years' work at the stations.

Director Wu Shimin of the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau promised at the conference that social workers would receive a similar salary to staff members at government-sponsored institutions, which would make social work more attractive as a long-term career choice.

China did not have any social workers until the 1980s. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Civil Affairs jointly established regulations on social workers in 2006.