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'Don't go home for the holiday'
31/01/2008 10:06 - (SA)
Beijing - Chinese authorities warned on Thursday of more travel misery to come as millions of people struggled to get home for China's most important holiday amid savage winter weather.
Across the country, millions of travellers have been stranded or delayed in the transport chaos wreaked by freezing conditions and the worst winter snow storms in 50 years.
The weather has affected at least 105 million people in all, left 64 dead, triggered a shortage of basic goods in some areas and badly hit transport and power networks, according to state media.
The government has called for calm with more harsh weather forecast for broad swathes of central, southern and eastern China.
New Year festival
But with hordes of angry and desperate travellers battling to get home for next week's Lunar New Year festival, the government has taken the rare step of asking millions of migrant workers to forego their annual trip home - often, their only bright spot in a life of hard toil and low pay.
"For the sake of their safety, and relieving the stress on transport, I advise migrant workers to stay in the cities where they work," Zheng Guoguang, chief of the China Meteorological Administration, told the China Daily.
"In normal weather conditions, it would take at least one week for full restoration of power supplies. Against the current backdrop, it will take far longer for electricity supplies, and road and railway traffic to return to normal."
Although air, rail, and road traffic in many areas has slowly begun moving again, in other large regions the transport system is effectively paralysed.
Twelve national highways across six provinces remained impassable in some areas late on Wednesday, causing huge traffic jams, Xinhua news agency said.
In the southern city of Guangzhou, about 800 000 people reportedly remained stranded amid continued chaos on road and rail networks leading north.
Officials were quoted by state media as saying the snarls in the southern city of Guangzhou, where millions of migrant workers from elsewhere in China live and work, would persist for at least another three to five days.
- AFP
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