The frequent tragedies involving migrant workers' seeking their wage arrears, mostly at year-end, reveal the lack of a mechanism to ensure the effective implementation of the laws and regulations to protect the vulnerable group's rights and interests.

After a failed attempt to get the wage arrears of her father and other migrant workers, a 14-year-old girl jumped to her death from the 16th floor of an under-construction building in Jizhou, Hebei province in North China, on Jan 19. Her father and his fellow workers from Sichuan province, Southwest China, worked for a property developer in Jizhou from the beginning of 2012 to May 2013 and their accumulated wages amounted to about 900,000 yuan ($144,000). They had made several attempts to get their wage arrears before the tragic incident.

The 14-year-old girl's death came just days after a woman from Henan province, Central China, was beaten to death in a police station in Taiyuan, Shanxi province in North China, for demanding her wage arrears. Not surprisingly, the girl's father and the other migrant workers were paid their wage arrears after the intervention of local authorities and the media storm over the girl's death.

It is indeed sad that a man gets his hard-earned wages only after his daughter sacrifices her life. It is even sadder to know the existence of an "unwritten rule" - migrant workers in many cases can get their arrears only after a sensational event or tragedy occurs.

The media have highlighted a lot of such cases in recent years - for example, migrant workers getting their wage arrears after threatening to take extreme steps such as jumping off tall buildings. Without fundamental institutional improvements and corrections, a large number of migrant workers will continue to suffer because they are a disadvantaged group compared with the powerful property developers. As a result, more such tragedies could take place.