CHONGQING: About 500 migrant workers who finished construction jobs here are still hanging around, sleeping on frigid concrete floors and eating plain rice in this wintry city - waiting to get paid.

Huddled for 10 days in cheap rented rooms, the cash-strapped workers from neighboring Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces first have to survive.

"I don't know how to tell the truth to my family," the local Chongqing Evening News quoted one of the workers, Chen Shiyun, as saying. He said his 89-year-old mother and 8-year-old son are waiting for him to bring money back.