A miner from the Daihe coal mine run by Anhui Huaibei Mining Group receives a free physical checkup along with more than 2,000 other miners, on Wednesday. The group has set up health files for more than 100,000 miners and established a foundation to ensure sick workers get timely treatment. [China Daily]

The legislature is considering amending a law on occupational disease prevention to better protect workers from health hazards at the workplace and ensure fair treatment if they seek compensation.

The initiative came after 29-year-old miner Zhang Haichao, from Henan Province, had his chest opened up in September last year to prove that he had occupational lung disease.

If the amendment is adopted, workers like Zhang would not have to go through such a painful process.

Under the current law, medical checkups and diagnosis of occupational diseases are based on information, including work history, provided by the employer.

In Zhang's case, his employer refused to provide the necessary documents to prove that he had worked in positions with health hazards, earlier reports said.

Under the new draft, which is open for public opinion until Nov 19, employers are obliged to provide on request employees' work history and evaluation of health hazards at the workplace, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

According to the draft, employers who refuse to provide the work history of an employee when he or she leaves the job could face legal consequences and a fine from 20,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan (US$3,000 to US$7,500).

"The revision will help plug the loopholes that companies use to decline compensation requests," Chen Zhiyuan, director of the China Coal Miner Pneumoconiosis Treatment Foundation, told China Daily on Thursday.

Previously, many employers refused to hand in the required documents, citing the absence of a work contract. These companies do not sign contracts with workers in a bid to evade compensation in such cases.

Without a contract, it is extremely hard for patients with occupational diseases to win compensation from employers, Chen said.

The draft states that if the employer still uses the absence of a contract as its excuse, the employee sufferi

ng from an occupational disease could resort to arbitration.

Arbitration could also be applied if the employee disputes information provided by the employer, the draft said.

But Chen also urged workers to improve self-protection and legal awareness by signing a work contract beforehand.

The new draft said it aims to protect workers in dangerous workplaces to the maximum extent.

Huang Zhendong, director of the Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, said that the prevalence of occupational diseases has been on the rise since 2005.

Some 1,985 complaints about workers' health problems at companies were reported in 2008, affecting more than 206,000 employees, who were owed more than 600 million yuan, Huang noted.

Most of them were reported in small and medium-sized firms and about 80 percent of the diseases were black lung diseases, of which coal miners were typical sufferers, he said.

(China Daily November 5, 2010)