The city of Harbin in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province will blacklist companies delaying payment of migrant farmers’ wages.

The announcement was made during a conference organized to find better ways to resolve the issue of unpaid salaries to farmers by several local governmental departments on Jan 13.

During the meeting, the city officals asked for an investigation to determine the reasons behind delaying or refusing to pay workers and urged companies to eliminate such risks altogether.

Those chronic offenders will receive severe punishment on all possible intentional causes such as illegal subcontracting and unlawful outsourcing and face media exposure and image problems in the society.

The companies, which continue rejecting to pay migrant workers’ wages, will be subject to police investigation.

In 2014, Harbin handled more than 500 cases of unpaid wages in housing construction industry, involving 21,082 workers and 767 million yuan ($125 million).

By the end of the last year, 78 percent of these cases were resolved. The government helped more than 11,400 people to recover a total of 320 million yuan in unpaid wages, according to a report made public by the conference.