Lawyers acting for hundreds of South Africans poisoned by asbestos are urging a British company to set up a settlement scheme to pay them compensation.

Jeremy Vine reports from the Northern Cape

The lawyers have won a ruling which paves the way for around 2,000 lawsuits against Cape PLC, which employed South Africans to dig up blue asbestos.

With the company long departed, workers are doing the reverse - trying to cover up the lethal substance. Breathing in asbestos dust is now known to cause cancer.

The old mine area is a haunting sight, with eerily silent villagers, the only remaining workers wearing masks.

Hundreds of claims

Work is getting harder for 58-year-old Elsie Segaecho, an off-licence owner.

The town is left deserted

She has poisonous dust in her lungs, because her father used to work in the mines and she played with the dust, not knowing it was dangerous.

People from her village are not just suing over the mine. There was an asbestos mill right in the centre of the town which spread dust in all directions.

Although the company pulled out in 1979, it is facing hundreds of claims.

The local doctor knows all about the suffering. Some of his patients who never went near the mine have incurable forms of lung cancer and only months to live.

Dr Gideon Smith believes the mining company should be held responsible.

"Many years ago they reaped the fruits of this part of the country. They've left and we now have the legacy of that," he says.

Slow road to compensation

Although British justice has moved too slowly for many, some of the survivors are finally closer to compensation.

Koos Yawa, a former driver on the mine, would die without oxygen fed through a tube and other expensive equipment.

In December his family celebrated a House of Lords ruling , saying the South Afican claimants could fight for money in British courts.

Although money will not end the victims' suffering their claims are slowly being acknowledged.