A toy factory was found to keep two set of workers' time cards to cover up labour-law violations, according to a report appearing in Information Times.

Workers at the factory in Foshan's Nanhai District complained to the newspaper that the company maintained two sets of time cards - a black set and a green set.

The black set were punched by managers and shown to customers and labour department inspectors, while the green set recorded real work time, workers said.

On two time cards smuggled out by a worker, the newspaper's journalists saw that the black one registered a clock-out time of 21:30 for three consecutive nights, but the green one indicated that the same worker did not clock out until 22:00, 00:01 and 23:01, respectively.

The factory usually required employees to work 11 hours a day, six days a week. And for the past two weeks, an additional one to three hours became mandatory every day in order to "fill an urgent order". One colleague was so exhausted that she collapsed on an assembly line, said workers.

China's Labour Law stipulates that a regular work week consists of 40 hours and forbids more than 36 hours of overtime a month.

A factory manager surnamed Cai admitted to the existence of the two sets of time cards, explaining that "law-conscious foreign customers often ask to see workers' time cards before placing orders". But the overtime was not so excessive as workers complained to the newspaper, and the factory's practice was "understood" by the labour department, Cai said.

The Nanhai District Labour Bureau has denied such an "understanding" and launched an investigation.

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