PLA Daily 2003-05-28

　 　Nationwide, the militia has been mobilized to help curb the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), said a senior official from the General Staff Headquarters Tuesday.

　　"Military commands at various levels and the local people's armed forces departments have mobilized millions of militiamen throughout the country to join the campaign against SARS," said the official,　"they set up emergency teams to help local police and health departments to seal off SARS-hit areas."

　　The militia also organized teams to help with general cleaning of urban neighborhood communities and villages, and disinfect key public locations, such as railway stations, docks and public parks, etc. all over the country.

　　During summer harvesting and planting season, many rural families were in need of laborers due to the fact that many villagers have migrated to　cities to do manual work and these migrate workers could not return home for harvesting due to SARS epidemics. In view of this situation, local militia organizations organized teams to help dependents of servicemen and revolutionary martyrs, "five guarantees families" and families whose principal members were in cities to do manual work. According to the sources, during the harvesting season, over 6.4 million militiamen throughout the country were organized into 1.4 million teams to render help to over 3.5 million families in their farm work.

　　While participating in anti-SARS campaign, the militia is also a main force in economic construction. Hundreds of thousands of militiamen have been shock-workers at the major construction projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam project, the West-East Natural Gas Transmission Project and the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, added the official.

　　By Zhao Yi and Wu Xu

　　(May 28, PLA Daily)