Op-Ed Contributors

Too many coal mine accidents

By He Bolin (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-15 08:20

Coal mine accidents are far too common in China, according to Da Sulin, a professor of management and politics at Nanjing University, who thinks poor management is partially to blame.

Da says coal mining in China is more dangerous than elsewhere in the world, and more dangerous than it has to be.

Coal mining accidents in China claimed an average of 5,968 lives per year between 1991 and 2000, at least 25 times the rate in such countries as South Africa, India, Russia, or the US. Calculated another way, China had 5.077 deaths per million tons of coal production, six times the rate in Russia and an astonishingly 141 times the rate in the US.

Despite the risks, workers keep going back to the mines to earn a living. Most of them are from the countryside and have few alternatives, Da says.

Da believes these workers, by going to the pits, have made a rational choice under the circumstances. Miners generally come from the poorest families in the countryside and have had the least education. There is often no other way they can make the 2,000 to 4,000 yuan a month they earn in the mines.

Inequality between urban and rural areas is at the heart of the problem, Da says. Since 1949, government policies have favored city dwellers when it comes to employment and benefits.

Rural people have been left to scratch out a living at a subsistence level. Even since they have been allowed to find jobs in the cities, rural people have been treated as second-class citizens. For many, working in the mines is the only viable alternative.

By denying migrant workers the same rights as city dwellers, Da says, the government has in effect denied them a choice of employment. Most of the miners caught in the Wangjialing disaster were poor, rural workers from Hunan, Henan, Sichuan and Guangxi autonomous region.

Thanks to government discrimination, rural coal miners have no access to housing, education, medical care or retirement benefits. They can be laid off at any time. For many miners, this uncertainty becomes more important than safety, social benefits, or other concerns.

Da says coal mine disasters should be examined from three angles: why coal mines don't provide better security, why rural workers can't organize themselves and negotiate for better treatment, and why the government fails to prevent serious accidents.

First, mine operators must be able but unwilling to improve security in order to improve conditions. Whether it is State-owned or privately operated, the goal of the mine is profit. The faster the miners work, the bigger the profits will be. Not training workers means less cost and more profit. Even if management breaks safety regulations, the fine is often trivial compared to the profit.

Second, Da says the widening income gap prevents workers from organizing to improve their lives. Frustrated and desperately poor, many cannot see beyond the next payday. They cannot take the time to seek other employment, and worry that they will be fired if they object to unsafe working conditions.

Third, Da says safety standards and regulations established by authorities are too vague to enforce. In this regard, he suggests that China, learn from the US, which requires safety officers to go down in the mines 2 to 4 times a month.

Officials in the US can also take management to court if safety violations are found. In contrast, the operators of many State-owned coal mines in China have higher administrative rank than the local government officials who supervise them. The country's traditional respect for power also contributes to the problem.

To improve this situation, Da suggests that safety inspectors be made more independent by assigning them to mines in other jurisdictions. Miners should also be allowed to have a voice in security matters and should accompany safety inspectors, he says.

In addition, Da suggests that any violation of safety rules be punished by a fine, whether or not it leads to an accident. This would expose problems before they become more serious and cause disasters, he says.

(China Daily 04/15/2010 page9)