Very little attention is paid to work safety and preventing occupational disease when the government approves industrial projects and foreign investment, Feng Liuxiang, deputy director of the Guangdong Health Bureau was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

He said authorities did not put any stress on the occupational disease issue when they approved such projects.

He said it was also a very expensive process to install facilities to prevent occupational diseases once the factories were built. So many plans to ensure work safety were shelved.

'It is not that we lack regulations on occupational disease prevention,' Mr Feng told Xinhua. 'As early as the 1970s, we had health safety rules in Guangdong. After May 1, we had the national law on occupational disease prevention and treatment. But most of it is empty words.'

Mr Feng cited the example of a 100 million yuan (HK$94 million) project in Huizhou, Guangdong, that releases a large amount of poisoned gas.

Requests by his bureau to contain the impact of the gas were ignored.

'If a large national project acts like that, you can imagine what the small enterprises are like,' said Mr Feng.

Enforcement of the occupational disease law is also difficult, according to analysts.

Limited staffing for this purpose within government means that it is impossible for the thousands of small enterprises to be individually monitored and inspections are few and far between.

In addition, most of the enterprises in Guangdong are privately owned by individuals who may not be well educated and who have little knowledge of nor respect for the law.

During an inspection tour by different departments to investigate occupational diseases in 2000 to Foshan, Nanhai, Shenzhen and Huizhou, it was found that Nanhai had more than 500 shoe factories.

Most were unlicensed and had just shut down temporarily during the inspection tours, it emerged.