Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has for the first time gone to a village and an urban community to seek public opinions for the government work report he is to deliver at the annual session of the National People's Congress, the legislature, in March.

Over the weekend, Wen visited a village in Hebei Province and an urban community in Beijing's Chaoyang District, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the General Office of the State Council, the Cabinet.

Previously, Wen has invited people from different social strata to Zhongnanhai, the compound of the central authorities in the heart of Beijing.

At the village called Pianqiao which Wen visited in 2000 and 2005, villagers voiced their concerns, said the statement.

Villager Su Hongxi, 68, said his family earned more than 20,000 yuan (2,900 U.S. dollars) a year by growing vegetables in a plastic greenhouse.

Su said the village had cement roads, chicken farms and feed processing plants.

Among the villagers' concerns were inadequate compensation for land expropriation, relatively low prices for grain and vegetables, difficulties in getting bank loans, and lack of training for doctors and teachers.

Wen told the villagers the government planned to increase subsidies to them, raise grain purchasing prices, and advance the pilot project of endowment insurance in rural areas and the new rural cooperative medical system.

"It is an important principle that the newly gained financial revenue should be mainly spent on the rural area, agriculture and farmers," Wen said.

The government has increased spending on developing rural areas and promulgated favorable policies for farmers, such as subsidies for purchasing electric household appliances and vehicles.

Meanwhile, Wen agreed there were still problems awaiting solutions.

He explained to the villagers that purchasing prices for farm produce could only be raised gradually as grain prices were closely related to other living costs.

He also advised farmers to better plan and use their land, plant more trees and make each household cleaner and tidier so that they could develop tourism when possible.

At the community in Chaoyang District, participants included local officials, community workers, disabled persons, migrant workers, college students, teachers and sanitary workers.

Li Nan, former secretary of the Communist Youth League of the Beijing Youth Politics College who lost her legs in a car accident in 2003, suggested the government pay more attention to the employment and psychological health of disabled persons.

Li also suggested the standard of compensation for people injured at work should be revised.

Advice from other participants included reducing student study loads, balancing the development of quality education resources, improving the welfare of community medical workers, and building community-level theaters to enrich elderly people's lives.

Wen said the representatives had been very helpful for improving the government's work and stressed that a government that puts people first should listen to what the people thought and wanted.

He also said work at the grass-roots level was very important for the government.

Since late January, Wen has also been presiding over symposiums attended by representatives from different social strata to solicit opinions on the government work report.