"Sunshine Project" – A New Guizhou Model: A Solution to Worldwide Drug Rehabilitation Challenges or Not? (4)

Bijie: has largest investment in this task and should make parallel efforts in preventing and implementing

Bijie is located at the Wumeng mountain area in the northwest part of Guizhou province and at the junction of Yunan, Guizhou and Sichuan. Among all Guizhou cities, it shares the largest boundary with Yunan, allowing it to become the only path for the flowing of drugs from the world’s drug origin base “Golden Triangle” into China's inland, and thus turns into a worst-hit area. From a national vision, Yunan is the first defensive line in preventing drugs flowing from the “Golden Triangle”, while Guizhou ranks the second, within which Bijie is in the front line.

Currently, there are more than 29,000 registered drug users in Bijie, telling us the urgency and importance for it to launch the fight against drugs. Bijie has invested over 42 million Yuan since the launch of “Sunshine Project” last year, and established three bases and four placement venues, totally offering more than 2,000 job opportunities. By virtue of such actions, number of drug-related criminals there has evidently decreased by 11.76 percent while people’s sense of security improved by 7 percent in the first half of this year compared to the second half of last year. The number of those achieving three-year-rehabilitation was increased by 1,152 over a year plus, yet the rate of supervision & control over the rehabilitated grew to 40 percent from original 32 percent.

Biye is expected to input over 150 million Yuan into the “Sunshine Project”. Totally 14 job placement bases are expected to be completed in the first half of next year which may accommodate more than 300 people. In case of entrepreneurship, the rehabilitated may get access to the preferential terms for small and micro businesses, i.e. 50,000 Yuan public subsidy upon 100,000 Yuan self-funded investment.

In the enforcement of “Sunshine Project”, Bijie is in a leading position nationwide in terms of investment scale, infrastructure construction and population of the rehabilitated having been placed thanks to its higher starting point and larger scale. It also creates new models in the practice namely “1+1” and “1+3+X”. The former means upon getting a job any rehabilitated person could have one family member accompanied to get an extra job; the latter is mainly targeted to rural areas, i.e. found one “Sunshine Project Job Placement Enterprise” and set up more than three rural bases each could offer a number of job opportunities. Moreover, it has established a “Sunshine Project” Construction Enterprises Association to jointly discuss relevant problems and propose solutions. Such acts can be used for reference.