In China: energy needs vs. mine safety

• Large coal mining firms will be encouraged to merge with smaller ones, as bigger operations tend to pay more attention to safety. About 20,000 of China's 28,000 mines are small, privately owned, and less well-policed ventures.

Whether the new measures help may turn heavily on whether they are actually enforced. Critics contend that the existing, more basic laws, are not.

While news of January's coal-mine disasters that killed 14 people in the US rang out with a sense of shock, similar reports trickle in every month from China's coal fields. (The United States Mine Rescue Association maintains a list at www.usmra.com/chinatable.htm.)

Many of the accidents could have been prevented with basic safety procedures. Chinese media are rife with examples of stingy bosses shutting off gas alarms and failing to fix rail cars that toss sparks into combustible air.

So why did US mining deaths garner so much attention while China's deadly mines continue on? Heavy domestic media coverage of Chinese coal-mining disasters, which began in the past five years, may not be helping, Munro speculates.

"If you publicize a problem but do nothing about it, what you produce is compassion fatigue. You get a lot of reports about these disasters, but nothing ever changes," says Munro. "Just publicity by itself is not nearly enough."

Coal-mine safety wasn't always so lopsided on the global scale. The US has had a low fatality record in recent decades, but it recorded an average of more than 2,000 coal-mine deaths annually from 1900-45, and the number of fatalities never dropped below 1,000 in a year until 1946.

Hoping to draw on some of the lessons learned abroad, experts are seeking help on mine safety from nations with experience. In one instance, Mr. Wright is working on a program to share training expertise with China from the now-defunct South Yorkshire coal industry.

For now, mine-safety inspections here are lacking and often far from objective. Thousands of small mines have complicated financial backing, which has been unraveled with often disturbing results. In one case, after a deadly mine accident, it was revealed that the safety inspector who gave the operation a clean bill of health a month earlier was also the mine's owner. Other cases involve corruption and bribery, with government officials taking money in exchange for passable safety reports.

The state workers' safety agency has lauded officials for closing more than 5,000 shafts last year for safety violations. However, a government audit of those orders found that only 40 percent of those ordered to stop mining actually had.

The estimated 3 million people who work in China's coal-mining industry need the jobs.

"Nobody works in the mine unless they have virtually no other option," Munro says.

Page: 1 | 2