Mentally ill workers mistreatment sparks netizen fury

A group of mentally ill workers were escorted home Thursday after media exposure of them being exploited in a sweatshop in the central Chinese province of Hubei stirred nationwide fury online.

Local media reports said that 11 workers, seven of them who appeared to be mentally handicapped, worked without protective gear and enough food in a plaster factory in Jingmen City, over 250 kilometers away from their hometown in the northern province of Henan.

The workers were covered in white dust from head to toe. Their dormitories were also covered with dust, filthy and crowded, said a report published early this month by a local newspaper Chutianjinbao.

The factory's makeshift kitchen smelled sour and the workers were only offered two meals a day -- mostly just plain noodles.

The report, with photos illustrating the life of the workers, went viral online on Wednesday after qq.com -- a major web portal in China -- put the news on its front page.

The report received 14,000 comments on Wednesday. Netizens denounced the coldness and inhumanity of the owner and questioned about lax government supervision.

"I felt so sad and almost cried when I read the news," said a netizen identified as "Zhenbao" on the Tencent weibo, one of the biggest microblogging sites in the country, on which the news was forwarded more than 40,000 times on Wednesday.

"Where are the government workers? Couldn't they see? How can they just take taxpayer's money and do nothing?" said another blogger named Xiangxiang.

Most workers were brought to the Jingmen Qiangtai Plaster Company last winter by a man Deng Yuhua, also a local of Nanyang City in Henan.

Deng said that the workers, aged between 40 and 50, were slow in both thinking and action and would do whatever they were asked.

Nine of the 11 workers are not married.

Xu Shunchi, owner the factory, said that the workers made on average1,000 yuan (159 dollars) a month and Deng helped collect their wages.

Police on Thursday confirmed Deng's claim that he had the consent of the workers' family before taking them to the factory and was sending paychecks back to their homes.

According to Deng, their family were actually glad that they could make money instead of being a family burden.

The factory owner and Deng are not likely to face criminal charges as police denied any form of slavery existed in the factory and the employees were not forced to work and their freedom was not restricted, said Qin Shaoxiong, an official with the human resources and social security bureau in the Duodao District, where the factory is located.

However, there are problems such as unpaid wages as well as the miserable work and living environment, said Qin.

Authorities suspended production of the plant and the owner has been fined 20,000 yuan. Workers had remained at the site until they were taken home Thursday.

The investigation is still underway, according to the local government.

Li Binzhang, an official with the district bureau, said that lack of government supervision should be blamed and the government should work harder to protect the rights of workers, especially those of the handicapped.

The district government said in a statement that it would launch an overhaul on similar factories to ensure the work environment is safe.