Grim fate of migrant workers maimed in China's 'black factories'

Ou Changqun's right arm remains crooked after seven operations to reattach her forearm, which was torn off by a steel-spring punching machine two years ago.

Doctors grafted skin from the 31-year-old Sichuan migrant worker's thigh to her patchwork arm but there was not much they could do to fill a huge hole left by missing muscle. The mother of two will never forget the bloody scene when she and the severed arm were extracted from the machine in a factory in Foshan, Guangdong.

"I went into a coma due to excessive bleeding, and stayed in an intensive care unit for three days," Ou said. "I had not signed a labour contract with the factory owner and was not covered by statutory insurance for industrial injuries. The unscrupulous boss even suspended my medical treatment for more than a week and I was forced to petition outside the Foshan government in my hospital gown."

She said she told herself not to give up, but she worried about making a living with only one functioning arm. She had worked nine hours a day, six days a week, for four years, earning 2,000 yuan (HK$ 2,470) a month. But her medical bill totalled 120,000 yuan. Her boss finally paid the bill and gave her compensation, but only after a 1-1/2 years of arbitration and lawsuits.

Mainland labour activist He Xiaobo, who lost three fingers in an industrial accident in Foshan in 2006, said Ou's story was typical of the millions of migrant workers who had been disabled in cities in Guangdong in more than three decades of economic reform and opening up.

"Among them, Dongguan and Foshan have the most cases of serious industrial injury," He said. "There are huge surgical departments, especially for hand and arm reattachment surgery, at every township hospital in Dongguan."

He estimated at least 50,000 serious industrial injuries occurred in Foshan every year, more than triple the number acknowledged by the authorities.