According to Xinhua agency (10 April, 2002), a gas blast in a coal mine in Jixi in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang killed 24 miners and injured 39 others.
The BBC news (10 April, 2002) reported that later on the same day of 10 April, explosion in another coal mine in the same city killed seven more miners.
The fatal accidents provide a stark illustration of the grim state of industrial safety, in particular in the mining industry, on the very day when government announced its latest campaign against hazardous mine operations. The campaign also aimed to reduce an oversupply of coal.
The China News Agency (10 April, 2002) reported that over 7,000 miners were killed in 2001, 5,600 of them in coal mines. An AFP report (10 April, 2002) declared that: "China has the world's biggest mining industry and also the deadliest".
In its attempt to avert the alarmingly high accident rate in the mining industry, the government has been pledging for several years to close down all illegal and dangerous mines. The last deadline was the end of 2001, which again failed to materialize. About 80% of the small coal mines in China are illegal and account for the majority of fatal accidents. According to Xinhua News Agency
(8 March, 2002) the government closed down more than 10,000 of the country's small coal mines in 2001. The government has set the target of closing another 30% of its small coal mines in 2002 and reducing coal mine deaths by 10 per cent. According to official record, 23,000 small coal mines still remain in operation, down from 82,000 in 1997.
The China News Agency (16 January, 2002) reported that industrial accidents had risen by 27 percent in 2001 over the previous year. Up to the end of last November, 940,000 industrial accidents were recorded, killing 116,800 workers.
In related news, Xinhua News Agency (2 April, 2002) reported that records of occupational diseases had risen nation-wide by 13 per cent in 2001 over the 2000 figure, to 13,218 cases with 2,352 deaths. An official of the Ministry of Health admitted that the official figure only represented the tip of the iceberg as most occupational illnesses among the country's 700 million working population went unreported. The privately-owned enterprises and the rural and township enterprises, which employ nearly 200 million workers, are commonly known as the worst offenders of health and safety. It is expected that a national law on prevention of occupational illnesses will be enacted in May this year.
(Source: AFP, BBC, China Daily, China News Agency, Reuters, Xinhua News Agency)
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Online: 2002-04-11