Black lung patients face a long wait for compensation
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E-mail China Daily, March 25, 2013
Hard battle
Liu Jianwei said the gemstone factory provided work injury insurance for some workers in order to cope with local social security authority's supervision and checks.
Liu said the employer dismissed all sick employees in 2009 and that had made workers' compensation payments difficult to make.
Workers should provide documentation, including proof of employment, results from health checks and workplace risk evaluations, before they can apply for an occupational disease diagnosis, said Ye Mingxin, an expert with the Beijing Yilian Legal Aid and Study Center of Labor, a non-government organization.
Currently, people claiming to have a work-related disease must follow a medical and legal process, including the occupational disease diagnosis, which takes, on average, at least three years to complete, she said.
It is only after the process is completed that patients can access compensation payments.
"Many employers refuse to hand those documents over, and in many small factories, employers do not keep workers' health records or conduct workplace risk evaluations," she said.
As a result, the process takes a long time, and the treatment for many patients is delayed, she added.
Only 10 percent of employees in China receive regular occupational health services, said Yu Wenlan, a health expert with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Based on my field studies in Hunan, Sichuan and some other provinces, the majority of workers with black lung disease have not received compensation because they did not sign an employment contract with their employers and bosses did not buy any insurance for them," said Dai Chun, a labor expert from Central China's Hunan province.
Dai said some local social security authorities lack the motivation to extend work-related injury insurance coverage, which in some ways fosters the malpractice of employers.
"I've learned that some social security departments are worried that they may lose profit in the work injury insurance fund if companies with a high rate of work-related injury incidents pay the insurance for their employees," she said.
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