Holding a summer camp to reunite 30 children from rural areas of Anhui province with their parents in Beijing this week is heartening and thought-provoking. Thanks to the All-China Women's Federation, the children can stay for a few days with their parents, who work in the capital.

The 30 boys and girls are a lucky group, even though their reunion is short. The majority of their 58 million peers, left behind in rural areas across the country by their migrant parents, cannot even dream of getting such a chance.

Compared with other children, the ones that are left behind by migrant workers are more likely to become victims of crime and a significantly higher proportion of them suffer from psychological and behavioral problems created by long-term separation from their parents.

Even if migrant workers' children live with their parents and even if the little ones can attend schools in cities, their access to education is not guaranteed.

Under such circumstances, Beijing municipal authorities have shut down about 30 low-cost schools for migrant workers' children in Daxing, Chaoyang and Haidian districts since June because of safety reasons. Let us hope, however, that all the students in these schools would be offered a seat in other schools as the city authorities recently promised.

The Chinese government can be proud that the massive migration of people from rural to urban areas has not given rise to clusters of slums, as is the case in some other emerging countries. Yet migrant workers endure suffering to stay in cities despite contributing to China's economic development. They are also compelled to leave their children with grandparents in villages because they cannot afford the cost of keeping their little ones with them in cities.

The lack of parental love, most important for proper emotional development of children, causes psychological disorders in many children by the time they reach adolescence. Such children suffer from learning disabilities, depression and social phobia. Experts warn that their troubles could worsen and lead to personality disorder, and say that migrant workers have to be with their children to ensure their healthy development.

The Ministry of Education has built or renovated more than 10,000 boarding schools in central and western China to ensure that children get proper education. But this does not solve the problem of family integrity, which is an alien concept for most migrant workers and their children.

Therefore, the rare reunion of migrant workers and their children at the summer camp organized by the All-China Women's Federation in Beijing is a bonus for the lonely children and their distraught parents.

The government cannot turn a blind eye to the misery of children living in loneliness and depression. Therefore, when it finds problems with the schools for migrant workers' children, it should help solve them, not just shut them down.