Fifteen villagers in Hengxian County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, have died of silicosis after working at a local gold mine.

More than 100 others from Guanglong Village are suffering from the disease, and at least 20 of them are in serious condition, according to the Information Times, a newspaper based in Guangzhou, capital of neighboring Guangdong Province.

Local authorities suspect lack of protection facilities at work was to blame, the newspaper said.

The mine operator has never insisted on workers wearing masks while pulverizing the ore in the open.

Since the Taifu gold mine began operation more than a decade ago, at least 200 residents of the village of 3,000 have worked at the facility.

After some villagers died, locals dared not work there any longer. All the workers now laboring at Taifu are migrant workers from other places. The newspaper didn't name their hometowns.

A reporter with the Information Times paid a visit to the village last Saturday.

Villager Meng Benzhong, 30, looked like a man in his 50s.

Soon after he began to work at the gold mine eight years ago, Meng began to cough and feel chest pain, his father told the newspaper. In 2001, Meng came down with high fever. "After that, my son became deaf and couldn't utter a word," the father said.

Most of the victims are from needy families. Even the relatively richer ones have spent almost all their money treating the illness, a villager surnamed Wei told the newspaper. "Many have stopped taking medications for lack of money," Wei was quoted as saying by the paper.

The gold mine owner hasn't paid any money to compensate the medical costs of the victims.

A Guangzhou drugmaker recently donated some 3 million yuan (US$360,000) worth of medicine to the village.

The reporter also found that laborers were not wearing masks beside a pulverizer. A migrant worker said workers put on masks several days ago when local officials came for inspection. "After the inspectors left, we took it off," he said.

(Shanghai Daily April 15, 2004)