Hangzhou plans to move employment services onto the internet amid the current virus outbreak, according to an announcement made at the Hangzhou government's briefing on the prevention and control of the epidemic on Feb 17.

During the briefing's question and answer session, Feng Huiqin, deputy director of the Hangzhou employment service center, said that Hangzhou will enhance its efforts to promote online employment and move all offline employment processes onto the internet.

Feng said that Hangzhou will release information on job vacancies on the internet to help connect companies with jobseekers.

The city will also host online recruitment fairs and otherwise attract workers using the internet and other forms of technology.

According to Feng, Hangzhou has already posted around 80,000 job vacancies at 5,382 companies.

As companies in Hangzhou begin resuming production, a shortage in workers has proved to be a major issue for them. To help solve this problem, Hangzhou worked with national train management authorities to send trains to Guiyang and Chengdu to retrieve workers and transport them back to Hangzhou.

Hangzhou also issued a series of policies regarding unemployment insurance, social insurance, subsidies for new employees, labor relations, and online vocational training in an effort to deal with the shortage in workers.

A number of other measures were taken as well. For example, Hangzhou encouraged companies within the same industrial sector to share labor resources as much as possible. It also recruited volunteers on the internet to temporarily fill job vacancies in urgent need of workers.

Feng also said that Hangzhou made full use of human resource institutes to deal with the shortage in workers.

As of Feb 16, 67 human resource service institutes had provided services for 84 companies producing medical supplies, 4,880 industrial companies, 96 trade and logistics companies, and 12 companies focusing on city operation services.

The institutes had supplied 24,000 workers for Hangzhou companies, 18,000 of whom were from outside Zhejiang province. They also trained 380,000 workers on the internet.

According to the reports delivered at the briefing, as of Feb 16, Hangzhou had reported 168 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 81 recoveries.

A screenshot of Hangzhou's live briefing on the prevention and control of novel coronavirus pneumonia on Feb 17 [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]