Society
21 miners confirmed as dead
By Li Yao (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-06 08:37
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BEIJING - Twenty-one workers trapped this past month in two flooded coal mines in Southwest China have been confirmed dead as more bodies were found on Sunday.
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They were among 13 miners trapped in the mine when it was flooded on May 29. Rescuers had previously recovered three bodies. Experts confirmed that the eight people still inside had no chance of surviving, the report said.
According to previous reports, a preliminary investigation indicated that the accident might have resulted from the mine being built out of accordance with an approved design. Local authorities said the mine owner should be held responsible for the accident.
The second accident, which took place on May 31 on the border of Guizhou province and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, left eight people buried in a flooded coal mine. The bodies of all eight dead miners had been found by Saturday, and police have arrested four owners of the illegal mine.
Guizhou has been the scene of a spate of mine accidents in recent years. Before the two accidents in May, the most recent there happened in April, killing eight miners in Panxian county.
The provincial government formed a plan earlier this year to restructure the industry and consolidate the mining sector by merging the existing 1,660 local coal mines into fewer than 200 in three years.
The decision followed on a national campaign, started in 2008, to close small coal mines in the hope of better protecting safety and the environment.
The deadly coal mine accidents of recent years have prompted Chinese authorities to strengthen their supervision of the mines found in provinces where large amounts of coal are produced.
The Inner Mongolia autonomous region, which has 730 billion tons of coal reserve, has reduced the number of mines operating in the region from 1,378 in 2005 to 551 now in the aim of ensuring that mines are better supervised and the environment is better protected, China National Radio reported on Sunday, citing Bagatur, chairman of the regional government.
According to a new policy issued by provincial authorities in early May, mayors in will be fired if a coal mine accident kills more than 50 people under their watch. And if anyone dies in a mining accident, the new policy will require the manager of the mine to step down and the mine to be sealed until safety checks can be conducted.
Also under the policy, mine leaders must accompany miners both underground and back up to the surface. If they do not and an accident occurs, the mine will have to pay a fine of as much as 5 million yuan, according to a regulation issued by the State Administration of Work Safety, which went into force on Oct 7, 2010.
Henan's output of coal reached 179 millions tons in 2010, the same year that 35 mining accidents in the province killed 266 miners.
As for all of China, 2, 433 people died in 1, 403 coal mine accidents last year, according to the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety.