A form of hazard pay to compensate workers whose job demands that they remain outdoors during bouts of smog has been suggested again by members of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

They also proposed that "haze" be listed among occupational disease risk factors.

Yang Ying, vice-president of Xi'an Writers Association and a member of the committee, made the proposal to the committee's ongoing session, which opened over the weekend in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province.

"I made the same proposal with another 36 members in last year's meeting and decided to make it again in this year's meeting," she said.

The proposal states that the local government should pay a special allowance to outdoor workers such as street cleaners, traffic policemen and construction workers when smog hits the city in order to compensate them for any negative health effects they might experience.

In recent years, Shaanxi has been badly affected by air pollution, especially cities in the central part of the province.

Since the beginning of this winter, smog has increased sharply and a pollution red alert was declared for the first time.

In addition to the city's emergency response measures, government departments should also raise smog protection up their agenda, Yang said.

Shaanxi provincial department of human resources and social security, and the provincial federation of trade unions said that they had received Yang's proposal last year and a feasibility study on the subject is ongoing.