Government and Policy

China gets strict on high-risk workplaces

By Wang Qian (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-24 08:17

Beijing - Strict measures to guarantee safety in high-risk industries were unveiled on Friday following a recent spate of severe accidents.

The State Council, the country's Cabinet, issued a circular, urging local governments and companies to strengthen standards by improving corporate safety management, providing technical support and enhancing supervision.

Huang Yi, spokesman for the State Administration of Work Safety, told reporters on Friday that the move will help prevent accidents in high-risk industries, such as mines and chemical factories.

Related readings:  All trapped miners found dead at flooded NW China coal mine  13 workers missing in flooded mine in C China  28 dead in coal mine explosion in NW China  Dozens killed in latest mine blast

The 32-item circular requires at least one senior manager of mines to accompany miners underground at all times. Violation of the rule will result in administrative punishment and a fine.

All workers in high-risk industries must receive professional training and possess valid certification. If any unqualified and untrained workers are found employed in such workplaces, the company may be shut down, the circular said.

Huang said the compensation standard for each worker killed in accidents will be raised to at least 600,000 yuan ($88,400) at the beginning of next year. The current compensation for each workplace death is about 200,000 yuan.

Factories or mines that witness two accidents in a year, claiming three lives or less, or one accident that kills more than three will be blacklisted and the information will be released to departments related to land resources, construction, finance, investment and banks to use as an important reference in future cooperation.

Also, seven national mine emergency teams across the country will be established to provide timely rescue work in the event of a tragedy.

In the first half of this year, the country witnessed 39 work site accidents, each of which claimed between three and 30 lives, and six severe accidents that each killed more than 30 people, according to statistics from the State Administration of Work Safety.

The death toll of workplace accidents reached 33,876, an 11-percent decrease year-on-year, including 1,261 miners. From July 16 to 18, five major mine tragedies occurred in Liaoning, Gansu, Shaanxi, Henan and Sichuan provinces, resulting in 51 deaths.

On July 16, six workers who went into a gas-filled defunct mine in Sichuan's Xuanhan county suffocated to death, and on July 17, a fire in the Xinling mine in Ruzhou, Henan, claimed eight lives.

The same day, 28 people working inside the Xiaonangou mine in Weinan, Shaanxi, suffocated after a fire released large amounts of toxic gas.

A flood in a mine in Qiuquan, Gansu province, on July 18 also killed five workers, while a gas explosion in a mine in Liaoning killed four on the same day.