The response has been mixed to a news item in People's Daily about the urban management bureau of Yibin's decision to send 70 cleaners on an overseas study tour.

While a certain section of the public is lauding the move as a show of respect to people belonging to the lower rungs of society, opponents of the idea doubt an overseas trip will lead to improved work standards back home.

Seventy lucky people, who have been named model workers at the Sichuan provincial and Yibin city levels, will represent the city's 15,000-strong community of cleaners, when they visit Singapore and Malaysia in four groups, from Nov 18 to Dec 14.

"The city's finance bureau has paid for the trip, arranged by a local travel agency. The trip costs around 4,800 yuan ($760) for each person," said Li Ke, an official with the urban management bureau.

His bureau did not talk to any department in charge of sanitation in Singapore or Malaysia, preferring to let cleaners find out for themselves how sanitation operations worked in both countries and experience their advanced management methods.

"It was the second time the city government had financed a study tour for model cleaners outside the Chinese mainland," said Yuan Xianyin, an information officer in the city.

He told China Daily that 61 model workers were sent to Hong Kong and Macao on a study tour last year.

Each year the city chooses and honors model workers from different sectors.

Last year too, model cleaners were chosen to go on an overseas trip as a mark of respect toward the diligence of ordinary laborers, Yuan said.

Highly impressed with the way the sanitation sector in Hong Kong and Macao was being upgraded, cleaners who returned from the last trip made suggestions, some of which were applied locally.

"Back from her trip to Hong Kong last year, Zeng Rong, then a 40-year-old who had worked as a cleaner for eight years, suggested setting up buried-refuse transfer stations in her home county, Jiang'an, in Yibin. Her suggestion was adopted and now the county, with many such stations, looks more pleasant," said Lu Yongzhong, a county official.

Many netizens have applauded flying cleaners abroad, glad that the latter will be able to enjoy a privilege usually reserved for officials and the rich. But some were skeptical about how much the cleaners will be able to absorb of what they saw, given they were not well educated.

"It is actually about rewarding model cleaners under the disguise of a study tour. Showing respect to ordinary manual workers is good. But it is not necessary to link a welfare trip with a study tour," said professor Zha Youliang of the institute of sociology under the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences.

He Dayong, deputy chief of the Yibin urban management bureau, admitted that a short trip abroad might not make a substantial difference to the cleaners' work at home.

"Our main goal is to rouse empathy for cleaners through the act, raise their social status and let their work be recognized by all society," he said.

Chang Mingqing, a cleaner in Chengdu, believed that the act will indeed arouse concern for hardworking and poorly-paid cleaners nationwide. She appealed to the government to raise cleaners' wages.

"Cleaners are not well paid. Money counts more to them than overseas trips," said the 47-year-old while mopping dirt from the road.

Even Zeng Rong, the model worker in Yibin, draws a monthly salary of only 909 yuan, lower than Beijing's minimum wage of 1,160 yuan.

Netizens suspected some of the officials were piggybacking on the cleaners, using the opportunity to travel on public money.

Liang Tingjiang, chief of the Yibin urban management bureau, showed the list of 78 people visiting Singapore and Malaysia to the Xinhua News Agency during an interview on Tuesday.

While 70 of them were cleaners, another eight were employed in other capacities in the bureau. Two employees will go with each of the four groups of cleaners, leading the team, he told Xinhua.