SURVIVORS of the Bhopal gas disaster in central India have demanded a substantial increase in compensation to help to rebuild their lives.

Twenty years after an explosion at the US-owned Union Carbide chemical plant killed more than 15,000 people, survivors are still struggling to cope with the aftermath of one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.

Yesterday, half a million people who were in the path of the lethal cloud that spewed out of the chemicals plant over the heavily-populated area received a second compensation payment of £300 to £1,200.

This latest payment was agreed only after a hard-fought campaign. To date most survivors have received just over £500, despite suffering extreme hardship as a result of injuries caused by the gas leak.

Abdul Jabbar, who has campaigned on behalf of the survivors and their families, described the terms of compensation as “shameless”.

“Within one year of 9/11 you have compensation paid out of many, many dollars,” said Mr Jabbar. “Within a year there is punishment, with the US in Afghanistan, then Iraq. Within a year the ground is cleaned up and a memorial planned. Here, 20 years later, there is no ground clean up, no proper compensation and no punishment. It is because these victims are poor men.”

After a protracted legal battle, Union Carbide paid $470million (£254 million) to the Indian Government in a settlement reached in 1989. It was only last month that India’s Supreme Court approved a plan that will see an additional $343.5million distributed to 572,173 survivors.

Shahid Noor was eight years old when the disaster occurred. He has vivid memories of the terror he felt on the night of December 3, 1984.

Just after midnight he joined his extended family and the stampeding crowds out on the streets, the gas-filled air rent with their cries. “My eyes hurt first, and then my whole insides were on fire,” he recalled. “It was hard to run, hard to open my eyes they had swollen so much.”

In the hours that followed, his mother, father and baby brother were among the thousands that died in local hospitals, vomiting and foaming at the mouth. Mr Noor, together with another brother and a sister, became orphans. Like many of the other survivors he continues to suffer breathing problems and abdominal pain and said that he can work only part-time as a salesman.

Shahida Bano, 45, said that the 25,000 rupees (£300) she received in the first round of compensation was largely spent caring for her husband, a labourer who never recovered from his exposure to the gas. He died two years ago, reduced to an invalid. “Because of the gas everything changed,” she said from her home, only hundreds of yards from the abandoned Union Carbide factory.

Greenpeace, the environmental pressure group, is campaigning for the Indian Government and Dow Chemicals, of which Union Carbide is now a subsidiary, to clean up the site, which still holds 25,000 tons of toxic waste. No one has stood trial in connection with the Bhopal tragedy although charges remain outstanding against Warren Anderson, the former Union Carbide chairman.

Union Carbide blamed the disaster on sabotage, and said that $2 million was spent on cleaning up the site before 1994. After that, the firm said, control and responsibility for the area passed to the state government of Madhya Pradesh.

The legacy of Bhopal

Campaigners say Dow Chemical has refused to clean up the site

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