China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
Officials impede China's fight to curb mine deaths
By Bill Smith
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
26 November 2006
Beijing - The death of 32 people on Saturday, in the latest major accident to hit a Chinese coal mine, reflects not only the poor safety standards of the industry but also the central government's struggle to rein in local interests.
The State Administration of Work Safety said it ordered the closure of the Changyuan mine, in the south-western county of Fuyuan, Yunnan province, in January.
But the government in Qujing, the city which administers county, redesignated the mine as a 'protected' one and allowed it to continue operation until the fatal gas explosion, the safety administration said.
The administration issued new regulations last week to reduce the number of miners working underground shifts at large mines, prevent over-production and make local officials personally responsible for safety.
'Miners working underground are constantly exposed to accidents and risks owing to outdated equipment and backward mining technologies,' Zhao Tiechui, director of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, told state media.
Under the new rules, government officials will face warnings, demotions, dismissal and possible prosecution for safety violations.
Allowing an unsafe business to continue operation after it has been ordered to close, as in Qujing, is among the 25 violations listed.
China has reported eight mining disasters with more than 100 deaths since 2000, as well as a 'ceaseless litany of smaller tragedies', the official Xinhua news agency quoted Zhao as saying.
About 6,000 coal miners were killed in accidents in China last year, according to official figures.
But the true total for mining deaths in China remains open to question, as deaths at small, illegal mines often go unreported.
Operators of illegal mines often use hired thugs and sometimes local police help them to keep the mines secret.
State media have reported violent disputes, sometimes involving murder, over mining rights.
Thousands of prisoners, sentenced to 'reform through labour', are also forced to work at coal mines operated by local judicial authorities.
According to an unconfirmed report by a rights group last month, up to 100,000 unpaid prisoners work at Chinese coal mines.
At least 13 prisoners died last month after gas exploded underground at the Furong coal mine in Yibin city, in the south- western province of Sichuan, local officials said.
The northern province of Shanxi produces about one-third of China's coal. It has shut down more than 5,000 illegal mines since last year and plans to close another 900 small mines by 2008, state media said.
Some local officials in Shanxi and other provinces have been sacked or even imprisoned for corruption and safety violations in the coal mining industry.
But it remains to be seen how far the new measures announced last week will go in curbing illegal and unsafe mining, in a country with some 200 million migrant workers.
In another initiative last year, the central government required local officials to declare their interests in coal mines, but few officials complied with the order.
'China has no shortage of safety and other regulations; the problem is the lack of enforcement,' Zhu Deren, vice-chairman of the China Association of Coal Industry, told the official China Daily newspaper when discussing the apparent failure of last year's campaign.
Zhu said the many government departments involved in the management of the coal industry were an 'obstacle to improvement of safety'.
'Collusion between owners and officials as well under-the-table transactions are to blame for the frequent coal-mine accidents,' the newspaper quoted Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, as saying last year.
As well as their own financial interests, local officials sometimes face pressure from local businesses and even the miners themselves to keep unsafe mines open.
Farmers in remote areas of Shanxi and other provinces also open up new or abandoned shafts for small-scale mining.
In a report earlier this month, the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin argued that the best way forward for the coal industry is to train miners to take part in their own safety management and monitoring.
'Since miners work in the mines everyday, they should be much more familiar with the situation of their workplaces than government safety officials,' the group said.