Sinopec offers free rides for migrant workers
Oil giant aims to make festival trip home better, safer and more pleasant
Tens of thousands of migrant workers going home by motorcycle or minibus during the upcoming annual travel rush will get a lift. They will be offered free refueling services by Sinopec’s subsidiaries in Guangdong province and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, starting from Jan 13.
A total of 10,000 free “refueling packages”, including a free pump, accident insurance and warm clothes and a few snacks, will also be sent to motorists.
Sinopec will said it would also offer free bus rides from 15 places, where many migrant workers live, to Guangxi during that period.
Armies of motorcycle-riding migrant workers return home during the Spring Festival each year.
State-owned oil and gas giant Sinopec said this is the fifth year the company has offered free refueling services for migrant workers during the trip back home, and two million people have benefited from the service.
It wants to make the trip back home a more pleasant journey, as many have to brave the rain and snow on the long and arduous ride back to their hometowns, it said.
The service will be offered to migrant workers living in Guangdong, with household registration in Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces and Guangxi, the six areas with large number of migrant workers.
Guangdong is one of the country’s provinces with the biggest migrant worker populations.
Those who want to participate in the service can log on to its official website www.gdoil.cn, its WeChat account, or go to a Sinopec fueling station in Guangdong for registration and reservation, and the application period will last until Jan 11.
Some three billion trips are expected to be made via road, railway, air and water between Jan 13 and Feb 21, a 2.2 percent year-on-year increase.
Railway tickets for the Chinese for the Spring Festival travel season went on sale from Dec 15, with the holiday more than one month away. But many migrant workers cannot get a ticket back home before the festival starts and had to pack their luggage and embark on the journey weeks early to avoid the travel rush.
As the passenger volume far exceeds the capacity for railways or long-distance buses, those who have to go back home at the last minute have to resort to motorcycles or minibuses to get back in time for the festival, an annual get together for Chinese people to reunite with parents and relatives.