China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
Han Dongfang
South China Morning Post
15 March 2006
COAL MINE SAFETY IN CHINA
Time to address this national shame
Applause filled the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last week when Premier Wen Jiabao announced that 3 billion yuan would be spent to make state-owned coal mines safer. Some may have found this promise generous, and it may have given hope to millions of miners in China.
But in fact, that sum is far from enough to tackle the safety problems in China's coal mines, the most dangerous in the world. The director of the national work safety board, Li Yizhong , said last month that 68.9 billion yuan was needed to improve the safety in about 2,300 state-owned coal mines on the mainland.
Simple arithmetic suggests that, at 3 billion yuan per year, China would need another 23 years to improve the safety of state-owned coal mines. A faster solution will require a drastic increase in the amount pledged by the central government.
Moreover, the state-owned coal mines are only one part of the problem. There are another 23,000 or so small and medium-sized private coal mines on the mainland, and a disproportionate number of serious accidents occur in them. So, at current levels of government funding, improving coal mine safety is likely to proceed at little more than a snail's pace.
A few days after Mr Wen's funding announcement, Wu Bangguo , chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, congratulated the legislators on their efforts over the past year to reduce the number of serious coal mine accidents. But any such congratulations are premature, to say the least.
There was a further spate of major coal mining accidents last year: 214 miners were killed in the Sunjiawan colliery disaster in Liaoning province in February, and another 171 were killed in the Qitaihe city colliery disaster in Heilongjiang province in November, to cite but two of the worst cases.
The total number of coal mining deaths per year in China has remained largely unchanged, at about 6,000. But the number of miners killed in each major accident has greatly increased in recent years. Since 1949, nine coal mine disasters have had more than 100 fatalities. Of those, no fewer than seven occurred after 2000 - and five of the seven happened in a period of just 13 months in 2004 and last year.
The average number of deaths in the less-severe categories of coal mine disasters has also greatly increased. So, instead of simply approving one more inadequate funding package, the National People's Congress should have considered the need to mobilise the country's coal miners themselves to address the safety issue.
No one knows better than a coal miner the safety hazards and danger signals at the coalface. At present, though, there is scarcely a functioning trade union presence in most of the state coal mines, and none at all in most of the smaller private mines. The miners play virtually no role in monitoring their own safety. NPC delegates should have taken one simple and highly cost-effective step towards improving coal mine safety across the country: instruct all owners and senior managers to establish miners' health and safety committees in every mine.
These groups would be staffed and elected by the miners themselves, and empowered to halt work underground and bring all the men to the surface as soon as any major hazard was detected. This relatively minor shift in the balance of power would probably do more than a tenfold increase in the government's annual spending towards halting what is fast becoming a source of national shame.
Ultimately, coal mine safety is about protecting human life, not about protecting state property. Such problems require a human solution, and for coal miners in China, that means having a modicum of organisational freedom.
Han Dongfang is the director of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based labour rights group.
www.clb.org.hk
Han Dongfang
South China Morning Post
15 March 2006
COAL MINE SAFETY IN CHINA
Time to address this national shame
Applause filled the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last week when Premier Wen Jiabao announced that 3 billion yuan would be spent to make state-owned coal mines safer. Some may have found this promise generous, and it may have given hope to millions of miners in China.
But in fact, that sum is far from enough to tackle the safety problems in China's coal mines, the most dangerous in the world. The director of the national work safety board, Li Yizhong , said last month that 68.9 billion yuan was needed to improve the safety in about 2,300 state-owned coal mines on the mainland.
Simple arithmetic suggests that, at 3 billion yuan per year, China would need another 23 years to improve the safety of state-owned coal mines. A faster solution will require a drastic increase in the amount pledged by the central government.
Moreover, the state-owned coal mines are only one part of the problem. There are another 23,000 or so small and medium-sized private coal mines on the mainland, and a disproportionate number of serious accidents occur in them. So, at current levels of government funding, improving coal mine safety is likely to proceed at little more than a snail's pace.
A few days after Mr Wen's funding announcement, Wu Bangguo , chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, congratulated the legislators on their efforts over the past year to reduce the number of serious coal mine accidents. But any such congratulations are premature, to say the least.
There was a further spate of major coal mining accidents last year: 214 miners were killed in the Sunjiawan colliery disaster in Liaoning province in February, and another 171 were killed in the Qitaihe city colliery disaster in Heilongjiang province in November, to cite but two of the worst cases.
The total number of coal mining deaths per year in China has remained largely unchanged, at about 6,000. But the number of miners killed in each major accident has greatly increased in recent years. Since 1949, nine coal mine disasters have had more than 100 fatalities. Of those, no fewer than seven occurred after 2000 - and five of the seven happened in a period of just 13 months in 2004 and last year.
The average number of deaths in the less-severe categories of coal mine disasters has also greatly increased. So, instead of simply approving one more inadequate funding package, the National People's Congress should have considered the need to mobilise the country's coal miners themselves to address the safety issue.
No one knows better than a coal miner the safety hazards and danger signals at the coalface. At present, though, there is scarcely a functioning trade union presence in most of the state coal mines, and none at all in most of the smaller private mines. The miners play virtually no role in monitoring their own safety. NPC delegates should have taken one simple and highly cost-effective step towards improving coal mine safety across the country: instruct all owners and senior managers to establish miners' health and safety committees in every mine.
These groups would be staffed and elected by the miners themselves, and empowered to halt work underground and bring all the men to the surface as soon as any major hazard was detected. This relatively minor shift in the balance of power would probably do more than a tenfold increase in the government's annual spending towards halting what is fast becoming a source of national shame.
Ultimately, coal mine safety is about protecting human life, not about protecting state property. Such problems require a human solution, and for coal miners in China, that means having a modicum of organisational freedom.
Han Dongfang is the director of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based labour rights group.
www.clb.org.hk