GUANGZHOU - Chen Yueying, a Guangzhou housewife, looks tired these days after her enjoyable but exhausting Spring Festival holiday.

In addition to shopping and cooking for her family during the festival, Chen, 65, has to look after her 1-month-old grandson. And then there is her daughter-in-law, who is recovering for a month at home after giving birth.

"I'm happy to be a grandmother, but now I am really tired," Chen told China Daily. "I was busy at home, doing housework and looking after my grandson every day for the past few weeks."

Before Chen's daughter-in-law gave birth more than a month ago, Chen went to local housekeeping agencies in search of a nanny, but to no avail. Many nannies and housekeepers, she learned, had already gone home for the Spring Festival.

And when Chen returned to the housekeeping agencies a month later, she discovered that her name still appeared on the agencies' waiting lists. To her disappointment, most of the nannies who had left Guangzhou for the holiday had not come back yet.

"I really do not know what to do, except to wait," she said.

Chen is not alone. Many Guangzhou residents are in a similar predicament, having found themselves unable to hire a nanny in recent weeks.

Huang Xiaohui, a white-collar worker, said a nanny she had employed until recently flatly refused to return to her former position in Guangzhou after the Spring Festival. The nanny, who hailed from Sichuan province, earned 1,500 yuan ($228) a month.

Huang said she is going to pay more in the future.

"I have agreed to offer a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan to a nanny, which is 500 yuan more than what I gave my former nanny," Huang said.

And since Feb 9, the seventh day of the Spring Festival holiday, she has visited or called housekeeping agencies in Guangzhou in search of a nanny to look after her 1-year-old daughter. But it was all in vain.

Guan Jianhua, an executive of the Guangzhou Association of Housekeeping Industry, predicted that the nanny shortage will persist for a couple of months in Guangzhou.

According to statistics from the association, the Guangdong provincial capital registered more than 300,000 nannies and housekeepers from around the country by the end of last year. More than 95 percent came from outside the city.

The association found that more than 200,000 of them had left Guangzhou before the Spring Festival this year, and fewer than a third of those had promised to come back afterwards, Guan said.

To encourage nannies to return, Guan admonished employers to treat them better.

Xue Rui, an executive from Wanjia Housekeeping Co, said housekeepers' salaries, despite big increases in recent years, are still low in Guangzhou when compared with those common in Beijing, Shanghai, as well as Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

As a result, many people from inland provinces and regions choose to work in Beijing, Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta region, where they can earn more money, she said.

"Guangdong province is no longer a major destination for housekeepers from outside the province, because of the uncompetitive wages," Xue said.

She added that many cities in the Pearl River Delta region, including Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Jiangmen, Zhongshan, Dongguan and Huizhou, are also contending with a shortage of housekeepers.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/17/2011 page4)