Premier calls for work safety measures By Jiang Xuezhou (China Daily) Updated: 2006-01-25 05:58
Work safety will become an important factor in evaluating the performance of
local officials, Premier Wen Jiabao said yesterday.
"Chief leaders in a province, city, county or township are also responsible
for work safety of that region," Wen told representatives attending a national
conference on work safety.
The legal representative of an enterprise must take responsibility when
dealing with work safety issues, he added.
Workplace safety has not been given enough attention in past years, and the
situation is far from satisfactory, experts said.
The premier urged all levels of government to implement safety-oriented
economic policies when seeking economic and social development.
"Work safety is a major factor of economic development, and we should prevent
the damage of people's interests and the sacrifice of workers' lives," Wen said.
Work safety funds and compensation systems should be established on the basis
of a stimulus-and-punishment mechanism, he said.
Wen suggested that measures be accelerated to encourage reform of coal mines.
The State-owned coal mining enterprises should take the opportunities
available to increase the level of their work safety infrastructures in the
coming years, Wen said.
Statistics indicate that the coal output in 2005 was 2.11 billion tons, which
is 7.9 per cent higher than in 2004, according to Zhao Tiechui, director of the
State Administration of Coal Mine Safety. But 2005 also saw 3,341 various
colliery accidents, which killed 5,986 miners.
To improve the situation, work safety watchdogs around the nation closed down
more than 4,000 coal mines last year, according to Zhao's administration.
Work safety authorities will adopt an annual supervision system to ensure
that coal mining enterprises with work safety certificates do meet all the
requirements for a safe workplace, Zhao told reporters.
Meanwhile, the ongoing campaign to shut down unqualified coal mines will not
influence the coal supply as a whole, Zhao said.
"By the end of 2005, the stock of coal reached 140 million tons, or 35.3 per
cent more than that of the previous year," he said. "Besides, the total
production capacity of those closed mines is less than 50 million tons."
At the same time, the nation will witness the increase of another 100 million
tons of coal production, because of the reconstruction and expansion efforts of
collieries in 2006, the official said.
(China Daily 01/25/2006 page2)
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