Coal mine death rate plunges

By Li Xiang Source:Global Times Published: 2013-2-25 23:28:01

Members of a rescue team in Jiexiu, Shanxi Province, are carrying out daily routine practice drills on April 12, 2010. After a number of deadly coal mine disasters, large companies in the province began to set up their own rescue teams. Photo: CFP
Members of a rescue team in Jiexiu, Shanxi Province, are carrying out daily routine practice drills on April 12, 2010. After a number of deadly coal mine disasters, large companies in the province began to set up their own rescue teams. Photo: CFP

After having been one step away from death during a coal mine gas explosion in 2007, Ding Fenrong, a 47-year-old miner in Linfen, Shanxi Province, has witnessed a sharp drop in the number of deaths from mining accidents during the past five years.

Ding was then among the 60 lucky survivors in the accident that claimed 105 of his coworkers at the Xinyao Coal Mine in Hongdong county.

The explosion, according to the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, was ignited by illegal blasting in an underground area without ventilation facilities. The explosives were also illegally purchased.

"Ever since that disaster, I have never heard of any mine operator in the county daring to breach the rules regarding explosives. Neither have I been told that there is a coal mine without ventilation facilities," Ding told the Global Times.

Rosy situation

The coal mine safety situation in Shanxi, the country's second largest region in terms of coal output after Inner Mongolia, has improved dramatically.

In 2012, 83 miners were killed during their work, a death rate of 0.091 in producing 1 million tons of coal, according to the Shanxi Provincial Coal Industry Department.

The figure was below 139 in 2010 and 202 in 2009.

The absolute death tolls nationwide have also plunged. In 2012, some 1,300 coal miners died, according to the State Administration of Work Safety. That was down from 1,973 in 2011, 2,433 in 2010 and 2,631 in 2009.

An official surnamed Liu from the general office of the Shanxi Provincial Coal Industry Department told the Global Times that the province has been trying to clean up its notorious reputation for mining deaths.

Illegal mining procedures have been cracked down on nearly to the point of extinction, Liu said.

Ding told the Global Times that he has not heard of any severe accident with a major death toll in Linfen since 2011. The provincial governor's political future was said to have hung on whether he could improve the bad safety record in the city.

The province, which accounts for one-sixtieth of the country in terms of size, digs out one-fourth of the country's coal.

Provincial concerns

A provincial campaign started in 2008 aiming to restructure the coal industry greatly contributed to the overall safety situation, Liu said.

The campaign, initiated by the then-governor Wang Jun, closed down small and illegal mines, phasing out all those with an annual output of below 300,000 tons by merging and other means.

Once rebuked by some as a retreat of private enterprises and an advancement of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), the move cut not only the number of mines from 2,598 in 2008 to 1,053 in 2012, but also the death toll.

In 2012, the province shut down the last of the mines with an annual output of fewer than 300,000 tons, Li Xiaopeng, the then-acting governor, said in late January.

The province, by establishing an entry threshold, has become a trendsetter of limiting mining by shady, small operators more likely to cut corners on safety regulations.

According to this year's work priority guidelines posted by the State Administration of Work Safety on Monday, the agency ordered that no approval be granted to new coal mine projects with an output of fewer than 300,000 tons.

The notice also encourages big coal mining companies to acquire and merge with smaller ones.

"Shanxi might be ahead of the curve in implementing this, but it has spent five years working on it," an official surnamed Zhu from the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety told the Global Times, adding that with the State-level edict, the rule will be quickly followed.

Move toward centralization

"Merely restructuring or converging the production and resources into a few big players' hands cannot propel the industry's sustainable growth," a medium-level manager surnamed Wang from the State-owned Jincheng Anthracite Mining Group told the Global Times.

Wang said that a lack of overall managerial strategy has been hindering the industry from taking off. "Sometimes, the industry looks like a patchwork of loosely run businesses, even with the involvement of big SOEs."

Wu Zongzhi, director of the China Academy of Safety Science and Technology, told the China Youth Daily earlier that the exploitation of coal resources in China largely relies on a group of management personnel without safety knowledge, and a bunch of temporary workers without safety consciousness. "In this case, a string of deadly disasters can happen," Wu said.

A press officer surnamed Hua from the Shanxi Provincial Administration of Work Safety told the Global Times that the province is focusing on training more experienced personnel to be channeled into the mining industry, and in five years, the demand for talent will be not as tight as it is today.

However, Peng Suping, a well-known scholar from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, noted that the scattershot locations of coal mines in the country means that Chinese miners will face more difficulty in digging out the same amount of resources than their overseas counterparts.

"A central government-level agency is badly needed to coordinate and manage the whole coal mining industry, rather than what it is now a multi-agency supervision mechanism," Peng told the Global Times.

The current State coal mine safety watchdog is only responsible for work safety, while a large majority of accidents nowadays are caused by immature exploitation skills, he added.



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