At a symposium jointly organized by the State Administration for Safe Production Supervision and International Labour Organization, Liu Tiemin, director of the National Center of Industrial Safety Science & Technology released to the press a latest survey report, which gave five major reasons leading to serious accidents.

The first, although we have a complete law system for safe production, it is not fully implemented. The second, production safety is under the charge of different departments, which do not work harmoniously. The third, there is no enough money put in to remove hidden dangers in time. The fourth is out-of-date equipment. The fifth, production administration mainly depends on enterprises' safety awareness, which pales beside economic profits.

Mine accidents occur one after another. This is not because we are lack of good regulations and policies, but that these regulations can not be implemented to the letter. From accidents exposed by the media we can easily see that wherever accident repeats the local government officials usually can not shirk responsibilities.

Dereliction of duty is common, and what's worse, officials are usually linked with mine owners in interests. They grant "go-ahead" to illegal mining and then cover up the truth with their power when accidents occur. In tougher words, they have become representatives of mine owners in power organs. In such areas no one could doubt happening of accidents, the remaining question is only when will they happen and whether they would be exposed by the press.

After the Nandan accident in Guangxi was investigated to the bottom, local officials at county level were almost all removed from office, with the former county Party secretary Wan Ruizhong sentenced to death. Who should know Wan is so corrupted if the accident had not been exposed? And who should know the local government had practically became a protecting umbrella and mouthpiece of the mine owner Li Dongming and his gang?

A simple logic almost leads us to the conclusion that the Nandan accident is not because of Li's illegal operation, but local officials' corruption. The local government, seized "capital power", becomes chief culprit of frequent accidents.

What's more, we can always see such scenes after accidents. The government of Fanshi county, Shanxi province, drew a light conclusion of "two deaths" because they "easily" believed in the oral statement of the accused. Isn't there any doubt of "capital power" behind this seemingly careless covering up?

Backgrounder:

Statistics showed last year China saw 1 million accidents of various kinds, leaving 130,000 people dead, a rise of 20.5 and 10.4 percent respectively over the year 2000. Among these were 11402 accidents in industrial and mining enterprises, causing 12554 deaths, nearly 50 deaths for each working day. There were 49 serious accidents reported from coal mine enterprises, resulting 1015 deaths, mostly caused by gas and coal dust explosions.

( July 3, 2002)