BEIJING - Upon the conclusion of a six-day bimonthly session on Saturday, China's top legislature adopted an amendment to the Law on Occupational Illness Prevention and Control in a bid to better protect worker's legal rights.

The amendment was added after the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), the legislature, conducted a third reading of the draft, which had previously been read in June and October.

President Hu Jintao has issued an order to publicize the amendment, which will take effect from the day of its publication.

Occupational illness refers to those illnesses caused by contact with dust, radioactive materials or other poisonous, harmful elements during a worker's occupational activities with enterprises, public institutions and individual business units, according to the amended law.

The amended law highlights China's enhanced moves to simplify procedures to help those suffering from occupational illnesses and to protect worker's legal rights, as treatment for such illnesses has become a growing public concern.

Growing concern

China's modernization drive over the past three decades spawned many enterprises, which - especially small and medium-sized firms - have long spent little on occupational health, resulting in a grim situation in regards to occupational illness prevention, according to officials.

China reported a total of over 27,000 new cases of work-related illnesses in 2010, according to figures from the Ministry of Health. Around 87 percent, or 23,000 cases, were of pneumoconiosis, while over 2,000 cases were of occupational poisoning.

Among the total cases for 2010, 69 percent were reported from the coal, railway, and nonferrous metals sectors.

Gao Shimin, a senior official with the Sate Administration of Work Safety, said Saturday that the country's follow-up supervision is expected to reveal increasing numbers of cases of work-related illnesses.

"It is only the tip of the iceberg," Gao told a press conference held after the session concluded, referring to the reality that a huge number of workers seldom undergo occupational health examinations.

China previously adopted the Law on Occupational Illness Prevention and Control in 2001. However, recent years have seen a surge in media reports on the hard struggles faced by coal miners-turned-pneumoconiosis patients in getting appropriate treatment and compensation from their original employers.

In many cases, the patients even found it difficult to be diagnosed as occupational illness patients by certified occupational illness examination organizations if they could not produce enough evidence to link their symptoms with occupational activities.

China has over 200 million farmers-turned-migrant workers, which have grown to be the backbone of the country's industrial workers.

However, in many of their work relationships, they could not get enough occupational health protection from employers, who sometimes wouldn't even bother signing a work contract with them.

The amendment is poised to dramatically change the situation by streamlining the process for the treatment of occupational illnesses and stressing enhanced occupational health measures by employers and government organs.

Measures

A worker can choose to undergo a health screening for occupational illnesses in the region where his or her employer operates, his or her own household registration area, or the region where he or she currently resides, according to the amendment.

It stipulates that one should be diagnosed as an occupational illness patient if no evidence can reject the necessary connection between his symptoms and the harmful elements related to such an illness.

Furthermore, according to the amendment, a patient of occupational illness can be determined based on other information, including the worker's symptoms and occupational history, even without the employer's document on harmful elements information in its offered occupations.

"All this is meant to better protect patients' rights," Su Zhi, a senior supervision official with the Ministry of Health, said at the same press conference on Saturday, hinting that the amendment will help stop things from being made difficult deliberately for a worker.

The State Administration of Work Safety vowed to further urge employers to improve occupational health conditions, and greater efforts will be made to improve the occupational health inspection system nationwide, according to Gao.

Gao said the administration will step up inspection efforts in firms, and especially in coal, granite and quartzite mines as well as in asbestos and wood furniture manufacturing sites.

Furthermore, according to Su, the health ministry's next step will be to work together with other government organs to upgrade the country's categorization of occupational illnesses.