A group of 148 farmers, mostly from Zhejiang's Taishun County, sued their employers for some 200 million yuan (about US$26 million) in damages for the lung disease they said they developed when working as tunnel diggers in 1993.

Among the defendants are the Taishun County Tunnel Engineering Company, the Taishun County Local Civil Engineering Company and a man identified as Chen Yixiao.

According to the farmers, they were employed by the defendants in 1993 to dig the Wujialiang Tunnel on the highway linking Shenyang and Benxi cities, both in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

They claim that the quartzite in the tunnel has a silicon dioxide content as high as 97.6 percent, but the defendants took no preventive measures to effectively protect the farmers from silicosis, a disease resulting from the chronic inhalation of silicon dust and leading to persistent coughing, shortness of breath and tuberculosis.

A report by the Zhejiang Provincial Committee for Diagnosis and Appraisal of Occupational Diseases in September 2000 confirmed that as many as 196 workers had acquired silicosis. To date, some of the workers have died.

Two of the employers Wang Yunfu and Zhang Wanmin attending the trial expressed that they were willing to shoulder part responsibilities for the case. But several defendants claimed that the case is a labor disputes and they have no direct responsibility to the case.

Due to the complication of the case, Tuesday's court hearing did not result in a ruling. The court said that it will continue investigating in and trying of the case this week.

(Xinhua 05/09/2001)