URUMQI: The government has approved a plan to recruit 5,000 special police officers in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to help prevent unrests such as the devastating riot on July 5 last year.

The new recruits will be civil servants under the Xinjiang regional public security bureau and their area of operations will cover the entire region.

It will be the largest recruitment campaign of its kind in Xinjiang and all new recruits, after a month of intensive training, will serve alongside special police officers seconded from other provinces, said Zhu Changjie, director of the regional public security bureau.