Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited low-income families in Fushun city, northeast China's Liaoning Province, on Friday, two days before the Chinese Spring Festival.

Wen was shown around a new housing estate, which used to be a shanty towns, housing mainly coal miners.

"It's the difference between heaven and hell," Wang Hongyu, a resident told the visiting Premier, when comparing the new apartment with his old house, which lacked water, electricity and heating.

It was Wen's second trip to the city, one of the major coal mining centers in the country's old northeastern industrial base, after he visited the place in June 2003.

Following the trip in 2003, Wen issued strong directives to the provincial government, ordering immediate measures to improve the lives of local miners. His order triggered a mass renovation of the province's shanty towns, which formally started in 2005.

By the end of 2006, nearly one million people in 11 cities across Liaoning Province had been relocated to new houses.

Laid-off worker Liu Yongjian still lives in his poky bungalow, which was built in 1958. The area Liu lives at, the Shenggong Community in Dongzhou district, has more than 2,000 low-income families.

Local officials told Wen that the community had been listed within the 2007 renovation plan and all the families would be relocated to new houses this year.

Showing his contract to Wen, Liu said he had handed in 14,000 yuan (about 1,794 U.S. dollars) and his 28-square-meter house will be exchanged for a 50-square-meter apartment.

The renovation project is estimated to cost around 20 billion yuan (about 2.5 billion U.S.dollars) in total, and the Chinese central government has promised to allocate 2.6 billion yuan.

"The relocated residents pay relatively small amounts of money for their new houses. If the floor space area is the same as their shanties, it is free. Any area over it has to be bought at a third or half of the market price," said one local official.

At the home of 74-year-old retired worker Zhang Yuanzhou, Wen said the Fushun city had contributed one billion tons of coal to the country since 1949.

"The Chinese government must solve the problems for workers in the old industrial base. The first step is housing. The second is employment," Wen said.

"Harmony will not be achieved until people live a stable life and enjoy their work," Wen said.

Wen also visited several local factories and extended new year greetings to the workers.