May 23 (Bloomberg) -- China's aid workers shifted focus to survivors of last week's earthquake as rising waters from blocked rivers and disease threaten 5.5 million displaced people in Sichuan province.

The operation has moved to rehabilitating people from undertaking rescue work, Premier Wen Jiabao said. ``It will be a harder and long-term task,'' he said yesterday during his second visit to the region since the disaster, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The deadliest earthquake in China in 32 years left more than 80,000 people dead or missing, destroyed 5.4 million homes and damaged another 21.4 million. Wen told rescuers to clear rivers in Sichuan where landslides created 33 artificial lakes that may burst their banks and to evacuate people in danger, Xinhua said.

The death toll reached 55,740 people in Sichuan with 24,949 missing and 281,066 injured as of 7 p.m. Beijing time yesterday, Li Chengyun, the provincial vice governor, said in the capital today. Teams have rescued almost 84,000 people from the rubble of buildings, he said.

Workers yesterday saved a victim who was buried for 214 hours, Li said. ``As long as there's even a flicker of hope, we won't give up our efforts,'' he said.

Rains are forecast across the southwest next week and will raise water levels in the rivers and lakes, Xinhua cited the Chinese National Meteorological Center as saying.

Flooding, Mudslides

The government is trying to prevent the spread of diseases and secondary emergencies such as flooding and mudslides, Li said. It wants to settle 98 percent of survivors within a month and restore all roads within three years, he added.

As many as 48,680 medical and first aid workers have been brought into the region, Li said. A total of 140,000 soldiers are helping the relief operation, he said.

The government is setting up a 70 billion yuan ($10 billion) fund to pay for reconstruction work, and government departments have been told to cut spending by 5 percent to divert funds for rebuilding. Disaster-relief allocations reached 13.96 billion yuan yesterday. Sichuan received 5.4 billion yuan in quake donations, according to Li.

Building work ``will be even more difficult than before the earthquake because the geological structure of the mountains and the whole area has become very loose,'' Li said. ``In this aspect, it is even more catastrophic than the Tangshan earthquake,'' he added, in a reference to a 7.5-magnitude temblor that killed 250,000 people in 1976.

No Major Risk

The lakes that formed on rivers pose no major risk ``in the near future,'' Zhu Bing, deputy head of Sichuan's provincial water resources office, said in Beijing today.

``If there are strong aftershocks or violent rain, there is the possibility that a barrier lake will collapse entirely,'' he said. The office is monitoring the areas and moving residents away from rivers that may flood, he added.

The Sichuan government has stepped up monitoring of market activities and has so far dealt with 60 cases of illegal pricing, Li said, in response to questions from journalists about black market selling of relief goods.

More than 12 million people were displaced by the May 12 quake that hit Sichuan and surrounding provinces. The affected zone covers about 100,000 square kilometers (39,000 square miles) or about 1.5 times the area of Ireland.

Tents Needed

China needs 3.3 million tents to shelter survivors, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday, adding that about 443,340 tents have been sent to Sichuan since the disaster.

``Tents are badly needed now,'' Weilin Kuang, China's deputy consul-general in New York, said during a news conference in Manhattan yesterday.

More than 150,000 tents have been provided by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the U.K., U.S. and the United Nations Refugee Agency, Xinhua cited China's State Council, or cabinet, as saying.

Some students have returned to class in areas affected by the temblor, and some of the 29,000 kilometers (18,000 miles) of roads that were damaged have been repaired and reopened, Kuang said in New York. Damage from aftershocks is hampering efforts to keep roads open, get medicine and other supplies to affected areas and bring injured people out, he said.

There have been 167 aftershocks with magnitudes of 4 or higher since the quake, Kuang said. A 4.5 magnitude shock hit the area at 3:18 p.m. local time yesterday, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.

Last week's earthquake was the most powerful to hit China, the world's most populous country with 1.3 billion people, since a magnitude-8.6 quake struck Tibet in 1950, killing 1,526 people. China's seismology department said the Sichuan quake had a magnitude of 8.

To contact the reporters on this story: Dune Lawrence in Beijing at dlawrence6@bloomberg.net; Eugene Tang in Beijing at eugenetang@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 23, 2008 05:16 EDT