BEIJING - Guo Hailiang rests in bed and breathes life-saving oxygen through tubes in his nose.

The 47-year-old from Yushulin village in North China's Hebei province has severe pneumoconiosis and is unable to work as a result of the four years he spent toiling at a coal mine.

Liu Jinrong cooks for her husband, Guo Hailiang, as he rests on a bed and breathes through a machine that produces oxygen that he needs because of his pneumoconiosis. They live in Yushulin village in Chengde, Hebei province, and were pictured last month. [Provided to China Daily]

He says he traveled to the Beijing suburb of Fangshan in 2006 to work at the small mine for 12 hours a day, digging coal.

They were days, he remembers, as being "like hell".

Guo was quoted by Beijing Times as saying the coal dust flew everywhere as he and his fellow workers dug, reducing visibility to zero.

Related readings:  Gas leak kills 8 coal miners in SW China  Miners seek justice for black lung disease  26 coal miners killed in gas blast  Hunan works all-out for miners missing in colliery flood

The miner bought himself several clinical masks to avoid inhaling dense dust that could almost choke him but they soon became stained black.

Guo's cousin once advised him not to work in such a bad environment but the miner insisted on staying, saying he could earn a decent wage there that would let him pay college tuition fees for his son.

But he began to feel pain in his chest and noticed he was having trouble breathing in the latter half of 2008.

He stopped working after the local government closed the mine in May 2010 and was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis a month later.

"My lungs have become as hard as stones," he said. "When I find myself having difficulty breathing, I wish I had the courage to stab my chest with a knife to let the air in."

The same fate befell eight of his fellow villagers who once also worked at mines in Fangshan.

Each of them received around 170,000 yuan ($26,000) in one-off injury compensation from the local social security bureau last year. Many who got the payment, including Guo, have used most of the money to pay for medicine and oxygen-producing apparatus.

Beijing-based lawyer Han Shichun said that if the workers had selected to receive their money on a monthly basis, they could have got a total of 1 million yuan over 20 years.

But an official surnamed Zhang from the Fangshan social security bureau said a monthly payment might not be feasible for all.

Money first has to be transferred to mine bosses who then dole it out to former workers. He said all small mines in the district were closed last year, posing problems for the payment of workers' compensation on a monthly basis.

Most of the 332 former miners in the district who have the ailment chose the one-time compensation. The rest are still awaiting a settlement, Fangshan district's social security authorities said.

Guo now lives on charity from relatives. His wife, Liu Jinrong, wakes him up and helps him sit up when he has trouble sleeping at night.

"My husband's lungs have become hardened and prolapsed and are damaging other organs," said Liu. "If he lies on the bed for too long, he might never wake up."

His wife makes him porridge every day, saying: "I cannot afford to buy any meat."

Pneumoconiosis is a major problem across China. More than 10,000 new cases of the disease are reported each year.

There is a glimmer of hope for sufferers because some local governments are taking action.

In East China's Jiangxi province, nearly 500 residents of Shangshan village developed the ailment while working in the village gold mine. Some 137 of them have died of the disease since 1994. Their families account for one sixth of the total households in the village. Most of those sickened by the disease are between 45 and 55.

Bombs were often used during mining that caused a great deal of dust and many miners worked without any protection at all.

The local government closed the gold mine in 1996, nine years after it opened. Each worker was given a one-off compensation payment of 9,000 yuan.

The inability of sufferers to work coupled with the small compensation payment led many victims and their families into very difficult times financially.

To help address some of the issues, the provincial authority has said it plans to provide free health checks and lung-wash services to sufferers and will ensure they enjoy additional favorable medical insurance polices.