A chartered plane carrying 170 workers from Zunyi, Guizhou province, arrives at the Wenzhou Longwan International Airport on Feb 25. This is the first chartered plane that Wenzhou has organized to pick up workers from elsewhere. [Photo/zj.zjol.com]

Editor's note: Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in January, Zhejiang province has been making vigorous efforts to fight it. This special series will take a close look at the measures the province has taken during the epidemic. 

Zhejiang province has made vigorous efforts to help companies resume work over the past month. 

On Feb 9, the provincial government issued a statement encouraging companies to resume work in an orderly manner while exercising strict epidemic control at the same time. The next day, it also released 30 measures to support companies in areas like tax and fee reduction, funding and labor.

The province has also taken advantage of digital technologies to ensure safety and efficiency, such as a health code to effectively monitor the whole population's health condition and movements, and an epidemic situation map to assess the infection risks in all its counties and districts. 

In addition, government cadres have been appointed to help companies, and chartered buses, trains and planes have been organized to pick up workers from other provinces.

Ying Yedong, deputy Party chief of the Yongkang Economic and Development Zone in Jinhua, led several officials to Zhenxiong county, Zhaotong, Yunnan province in February to pick up workers and recruit new employees to address the labor shortage in the zone. 

The zone has many workers from Zhenxiong, and more than 40,000 returned home for the Spring Festival.

Ying brought more than 6,000 job offers to Yongkang, covering industries such as electric tools and door making. "Whoever wants to work in Yongkang can take a free bus to the worksite," said Ying to job applicants at a local job fair, "please help us spread our recruitment information to more people to encourage them to work in Yongkang."

Ying Yedong (second left), Deputy Party chief of the Yongkang Economic and Development Zone in Jinhua, answers job applicants' questions at a job fair in Zhenxiong county, Zhaotong, Yunnan province. [Photo/zj.zjol.com] 

As of March 1, Yongkang had sent six chartered trains and 173 chartered buses to Zhenxiong and picked up more than 20,000 workers.

Sun Ningwei, vice-president of Xinhai Group in Ningbo, said overseas clients supported the company in resuming work.

"A Dutch client told us that they will place more orders than planned because they believe China still has the most stable suppliers despite the epidemic," said Sun.

Around 93 percent of the company's workers have returned to work and its production capacity has recovered to 88 percent.

Due to a shortage of face masks, at one point the company turned to overseas clients for help, and managed to receive around 100,000 masks from them.

The government also helped with labor shortages, said Sun, explaining that many of their workers were sent back by chartered trains organized by the local government.

A sketch of Sun Ningwei, vice-president of Xinhai Group in Ningbo, calling overseas clients to help with the face mask shortage [Photo/zj.zjol.com]

"Resuming normal operations while effectively controlling the epidemic is a big challenge and puts the social governance of a region to the test. Zhejiang rose to the challenge with its policies and technologies, but problems still exist in labor, markets and funding. So the government needs to continue helping companies," said Lan Jianping, director of the Zhejiang Institute of Industry and Information Technology.