REFILE-Hundreds of Chinese pensioners protest over payments - report
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:46 GMT
(Corrects typo in spelling of province in third paragraph)
BEIJING, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Chinese retirees who worked for a company which built the massive Three Gorges Dam have blocked streets in protest about pensions over the past three days, China's official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
The pensioners, who worked for Gezhouba Group, are complaining that their pension payments have been calculated unfairly, Xinhua said in an English-language report.
The protest has now entered its third day, and hundreds of people have blocked traffic on the streets in Yichang in central Hubei province where the company is based, it added.
"Most of the protesters are aged between 60 and 70, and relatives and onlookers have joined them at the site of the protest," Xinhua said. "The protesters have also complained about unreasonable terms in the company's medical care policy."
Gezhouba has promised to look into their complaints and increase pension payments, the report added.
A company official reached by telephone declined to comment.
Xinhua said the company has over 20,000 retirees. It has a Shanghai-listed unit called China Gezhouba Group Corp .
The 185-metre tall Three Gorges Dam began operations in 2005 and is the world's largest hydropower project.
China's ruling Communist Party worries that the tens of thousands of sporadic protests over land grabs, corruption and economic grievances that break out across the country every year could coalesce into a national movement and threaten its control.
China saw almost 90,000 such "mass incidents" of riots, protests, mass petitions and other acts of unrest in 2009, according to a 2011 study by two scholars from Nankai University in north China. Some estimates go even higher.
That is an increase from 2007, when China had over 80,000 mass incidents, up from over 60,000 in 2006, according to an earlier report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Most protests are either dispersed by security forces, or by officials promising demonstrators their demands will be heeded. None have so far even come close to becoming national movements which could challenge the central government. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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