The 35-year-old said he had been at the site for less than a month; before that he had been building houses.

"I get 5 yuan (73 cents) more a day working here than I do building houses," he said.

"I wanted to make some more money, but I didn't expect to meet with disaster.

"We're paid 40 yuan a day, but that's nothing compared to the risk we're taking," Fang said.

He said that after he gets his wages, he will look for a new job building houses.

Local authorities said yesterday they are still working on the details of how much compensation will be paid to the families of the men killed in the cave-in, but did not say what would happen to those who survived.

The collapsed tunnel was part of a 69-km underground rail project being built by China Railway Construction Group Co Ltd. The $5.1 billion project was launched in March of last year and is due for completion in 2011, the Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday.

Rescue teams were yesterday continuing to search for the 12 missing men.

Zi Baocheng, a spokesman for China Railway, said the efforts of the rescuers have been hampered by problems with digging machines, which have struggled to handle the deeply compacted earth.

"They have been forced to dig by hand, which takes longer," he said without saying when he thought the work might be completed.

Meanwhile, 11 of the 24 men rescued from the tunnel and taken to hospital have been discharged, the Xinhua report said.

Sun Hui, deputy chief of medical services at Zhejiang Xiaoshan Hospital, which is treating eight of the injured, said four are in a stable condition, but four others have been left traumatized by their ordeals.

"They are experiencing severe mood swings caused by fear and despair.

"They cry a lot and are suffering from insomnia," he told China Daily.

(China Daily November 18, 2008)