Construction boosts livelihoods, skills capacity

Since joining State builder China Railway No 4 Engineering Group in 2006, Zhong Lei, a 44-year-old employee, has been working in the country's southwest for years.

His experience has made him understand that a construction job has a multitude of benefits — infrastructure connectivity, beautified environment, elevated wealth for people and bolstered industrial vitality.

Born in Dazhou, Sichuan province, Zhong joined CREC4 after graduating from Hefei University of Technology with a major in civil engineering. He later moved to Guizhou province to help build the Chongqing-Zunyi section of Lanzhou-Haikou Expressway.

With some 25,500 staff, CREC4's businesses are distributed across 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions on the Chinese mainland, as well as in 38 countries and regions, including Angola, Mongolia and Indonesia.

In 2022, Zhong was promoted to serve as work safety supervisor at the APFJ-3 division of CREC4 in expanding the Anshun-Panzhou section of the Shanghai-Kunming Expressway.

The Anshun-Panzhou section, which costs some 32.31 billion yuan ($4.75 billion), passes through Liuzhi special district in Guizhou.

"Hefei-based CREC4 has a clear aim in its construction work — building a top-quality project, and nurturing its staffers into versatile talent capable of working for various posts," Zhong said.

Following this principle, he began to pay vital attention in helping cultivate more professional workers from those who joined in building the Anshun-Panzhou expressway.

Governing 15 towns and three subdistrict communities, with a total population of over 750,300, Liuzhi houses 253 villages and urban neighborhood communities.

One-third of the villages of Longhe town, where Zhong's project department is located, are Miao ethnic villages, and most young people rely on migrant work to improve their lives, he said.

They designed a work-for-relief program to help the local residents, Zhong said.

Li Shifu, Party secretary of the APFJ-3 division, said CREC4's construction team has reached 2,746 in number since the building work started in 2022, including temporary workers from Liuzhi.

"Our project department has organized 35 free training sessions and pre-job training on steel bar binding and welding for over 300 local people, and finally hired some of them for the construction work," he said.

Through systematic and practical pre-job coaching, multiple ethnic minority groups and local migrant workers have mastered practical construction techniques, such as concrete pouring, steel bar binding and welding, successfully transforming ordinary villagers into skilled industrial workers, Li said.

Yang Wenfu, a Miao ethnic worker from Longchang village in Longhe, joined the CREC4 construction team after training.

"Previously, I had to depend on my 0.2-hectare paddy field and rapeseed fields to make a living, but now, as a steel reinforcement worker, I can proficiently tie and knot steel bars to earn a handsome monthly salary to support my children in education," he said.

As work safety supervisor, Zhong has also helped organize 664 safety education and training sessions, with over 5,300 participants.

"Our training covers such areas as work safety knowledge and laws, safety technical regulations, hidden danger reporting mechanism and process, major risk notification and prevention," Zhong said.

Li said building a highway can bring a series of benefits — profit and employees' skill enhancement for CREC4, better flow of goods and people for the nation, and cash income for the local residents participating in the construction work.

Li noted that since their construction work started, they have provided 2,347 jobs for locals, including 215 ethnic minority workers, paying them 138.58 million yuan as salaries and helping the local workers increase their annual income by 36,000 yuan each year.

"Meanwhile, our 2,746 staffers working here have also boosted the economy of Longhe through our daily spending," he said.

"CREC4 staffers have enabled our villagers to learn skills and steadily increase their income at their doorsteps. They have truly built a bridge of friendship, injecting strong momentum into the rural vitalization in Longhe," said Wang Yongyue, Party secretary of Longhe.

To show their gratitude, during traditional Miao festivals, the villagers of Yongfeng often invited Li's colleagues to participate in cultural activities, enjoying art performances and Miao dances, expressing their sincere thanks to the builders with long-table banquets.

Luo Tiantian, a 43-year-old native of the Buyi ethnic group, is a staff member of Li's project department. He said he feels honored, and it is a memorable experience to participate in the construction in his hometown.

"I will hold myself to high standards while in engineering construction, and not let down people's trust," Luo said.