CHINA: Lax safety has made China's mining industry the world's deadliest with 6,000 deaths last year, writes Clifford Coonan
It's a regular fixture on China's evening television news - the sight of grimy-faced emergency workers carrying out injured and dead coal miners from another flooded pit as weeping relatives look on.
Only three bodies have been brought to the surface after a flood trapped 123 miners in the Daxing mine in the southern province of Guangdong on August 7th, but hopes were fading for the remaining workers left underground, the latest sacrifices to China's massive hunger for coal as the economy simmers.
Six thousand miners died last year in floods and explosions that made China's mining industry the world's deadliest. Safety standards are regularly ignored in the interest of ramping up production; a Chinese miner is 100 times more likely to die in a workplace accident than his American counterpart.
Mindful of the potentially destabilising effect of constant reports of mining disasters, the government has waged campaign after campaign to try to regulate the industry and boost safety, but has been unable to stop the rising number of deaths. There are sound political reasons for encouraging safer mines. The last thing the Communist Party wants is civic unrest because unscrupulous mine-owners are making a fast buck at the expense of safety.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who is proud of his man of the people image, has donned a miner's hat himself and gone 1,300m underground, where he shook hands with miners and ate a lunch of dumplings.
He has visited grieving families, and tearfully told officials to leave no stone unturned in "learning lessons drawn in blood". And still the disasters keep happening.
In the latest official effort to slow the horrific accident rate, Li Yizhong, director of the National Bureau of Production Safety Supervision and Administration, ordered over 7,000 unsafe coal mines to shut by the end of the year.
Daxing opened in 1990 as a state-owned company, one of numerous smaller mines dotting the province and was sold in 1999 to private buyers.
This company is accused of cutting safety standards to maximise output, squeezing over 50,000 tonnes of coal from a mine designed to produce 30,000 tonnes annually.
China produced about a third of the world's coal last year but accounted for 80 per cent of mining deaths.
Every million tonnes of coal produced in the country cost the lives of around five Chinese people.
The lion's share of deaths last year in coal mine accidents were in small, privately owned pits that the state has so far proved unable to control.
Illegal mines, if shut down, routinely reopen once inspectors leave, lured by coal prices that jumped more than 40 per cent last year. Many of the deaths at the illegal coal mines go unreported.
There are reports of operators trying to get rid of bodies of dead miners to cover up accidents. Others threaten to withhold compensation, usually around €3,000, unless family members of the dead agree not to publicise the accidents.
The Workers Daily, one of the main state newspapers, weighed in with an editorial saying the disaster at Daxing could have been avoided.
"A month ago, mine workers found water seeping through the wall and reported it to their bosses, but they didn't accept the seriousness of the problem and asked workers to go down the pit again. This disaster was caused by human error, not an act of God," the newspaper said.
Three weeks ago the Fusheng mine near Daxing also flooded, killing 16 workers. All smaller mines in the area were shut but Daxing kept running, confident it would escape discovery.
Efforts have been stepped up since last February, when an explosion ripped through the colliery in Liaoning province killing 214 workers in what was China's deadliest mine disaster since the Communist Revolution in 1949.
"If we want to stop these disasters, we must increase the fines to ensure mining companies realise they cannot afford to lose a worker's life and must invest more in staff safety," said Zhang Yulong, former head of Guangdong state's labour research group.
"What's more, the safety departments are negligent, keeping a 'one-eye-open, one-eye-closed' approach to safety," said Zhang.
An editorial on the Xinhua news agency pointed the finger at corrupt local officials.
"One of the reasons for the frequency of these mining disasters is abuse of authority by officials. They accept bribes and abuse their power to protect companies doing illegal acts. They are blinded by lust for gain, and negligent of workers' lives," said Xinhua.