Working Conditions

 “There is corruption behind every mine disaster”
Zhao Baoming, deputy chief of the State Council  Work Safety Commission

Death toll rises to over 250 in deadly mudslide from illegal iron ore mine

More details have emerged about the deadly collapse of a reservoir holding illegally deposited iron ore tailings in Linfen, Shanxi Province where the death toll has reached around 254 (as of Saturday).

Just a few hours earlier, the Shanxi Provincial Government Secretary-General Wang Qingxian stated that ‘Internet claims that hundreds of people were missing were mere speculation’. Relatives of the dead will reportedly receive 200,000 Yuan (29,215 U.S. dollars) each as compensation but so far only 38 bodies have had their identities confirmed. A total of 1,047 have been displaced by the mud-rock flow.

One news report quoted a villager, Kong Zhaohua, who lives in a nearby village, saying he was not convinced about the official death toll…"The death toll is much more than what they said on television and radio," he said. "These reports are full of lies. Local officials know too well how to hide their crime. If the central government leaves things to them, we will never find our loved ones…."This is not a natural disaster. [The disaster] is not because of the rain. This is purely a mad-made disaster ... the mine owner was greedy, officials corrupt and the voice of people never heard," he added.

He also said that local villagers had long complained of the danger posed by the reservoir but officials did nothing… "Villagers have protested on the danger of the reservoir for years. We have warned the safety officials of Xiangfen county that each time rain came, sand and mud would come down with water. But the officials came and went saying they were satisfied [with the situation] after they were given feasts by the mine owner and local cadres."

"The reservoir was abandoned and sealed by a state-owned mining company many years ago. After the state-own business went bankrupt private businessmen took over," he said.

The safety of other so-called ‘ponds’ holding mining waste was also raised after work safety officials reportedly stated that over 4,500 of the total (legally registered presumably) 9,000 such ponds did not have safety licenses and were believed to be in a dangerous state.  It is not clear if the Work Safety Administration was recently forced into assessing the safety of these ponds after this accident or if  this seemingly arbitrary figure was one which they had been mulling over for a while. Either way, while it sometimes may seem as if authorities are often blasé and callous about the extent of health and safety failings in mining, it cannot be denied that they face a huge struggle in turning back decades of neglect, corruption and cronyism. Ten or fifteen years has been put as the most optimistic estimate of how long it will be before there is a substantial decline in mortality rates among Chinese miners.  Given that the same local authorities are being pushed into re-opening  mines they only recently closed in order to fulfill energy demand and given that they continue to only lightly punish officials found responsible for accidents, it will be a hard and painful decade or so for miners and their families.

According to reports, the mine ultimately responsible for the mudslide was a state-owned mine, sold off in 2005 to a local business man called Zhang Peiliang. The mine continued to operate until 2006 when its license was suspended for safety reasons. The license was not renewed. However despite the mine being out of business, it was clear in the  local villages around Yunhe village at the epicenter of the slide that the number of miners around meant that the mine was in effect still operating. No investigations were forthcoming though.

As is usual in these cases, an accident investigation team has been established including officials from the State Administration of Work Safety, the Shanxi provincial government, the Ministry of Supervision, the Ministry of Land and Resources, and of course the ACFTU. The team is being headed by Wang Jun and as of now they have stated that this was an  "accident of grave responsibility" resulting from the illegal operation of an unlicensed ore mine.” Indeed;  "The rising accidents disclose local governments' poor supervision on work safety. Those responsible must be dealt with seriously."

However, given the laxity of most punitive measures in mining, far more serious and long term measures need to be enforced – monitoring, inspection, and the imposition of criminal sanctions for mine owners and officials; including that of corporate manslaughter or manslaughter.

For more details on the tragedy please see IHLO: A spate of mine deaths reveals damming evidence of the failure of attempts to reduce ‘accidents’ and illegal mines

Officials sacked – but party chief remains (as usual)

Kang Haiyin, the Communist Party committee chief of Xiangfen County, and Li Xuejun, the county head, have been suspended from their posts along with two safety officials from Xiangfen. The Mayor of Linfen is so far being allowed to stay – he only arrived a few months ago, after his predecessor was sacked in December 2007 after a mine blast which killed over one hundred miners in Hongtong.

However the Shanxi Governor, Meng Xuenong has resigned and the vice governor, Zhang Jianmin has been dismissed. Zhang Baoshun, who holds the higher ranking post of Shanxi Communist Party Chief  will reportedly stay in office.

Meng Xuemong himself has only recently taken on the post after his processor, Yu Youjun  was “shuffled” [and shockingly not seriously demoted] to a new post as the Party Secretary for the Ministry of Culture shortly after the uncovering of the Shanxi slave scandal when hundreds of children and others were found to be working  as slaves in brick kilns scattered over the province. [Meng Xuenong, was previously a mayor of Beijing, but was sacked in 2004 for his handling of the SARS outbreak – or rather as one of the fall guys  for the official handling of SARS - after the authorities delay in reporting and dealing with the outbreak became public.]

Hope now for Shanxi miners?

The new acting governor, Wang Jun, was born in Datong, Shanxi, a well known mining region. For most of his life we has worked in the coal industry – as a technician initially and later in the mining bureau and national coal mining bureau before moving to posts in Jiangsu Province for a few years before finally in March  2008, after the conclusion of the 1st meeting of the National people’s Congress he was appointed the President of the State Administration of Work Safety.

In an unusually frank article in Xinhua,  the question as asked if a new governor would help…. One local resident in Xiangfen, where the landslide occurred reportedly told Xinhua that;  "The local government has been busy changing officials after each accident, but nothing will change." Hopefully, this time could be different, since the new acting governor Wang Jun, 56, serves as director of the State Administration of Work Safety…. "With expertise in work safety, the appointment of Wang is expected to bring about real changes to the province which has been plagued by work place disasters every year," said Wu Jiang, professor of government administration and president of the Chinese Academy of Personnel Science.

Personally, we very much hope that things may turn around for the people of Shanxi now that they have someone who understands the mining industry and the intricate web of corruption between the local authorities and the mine owners. 

Linfen

Linfen was named the world’s most polluted city by the World Bank – in fact, in terms of air quality, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China and three are in Shanxi Province. Despite the blue skies in Beijing during the Olympics, the smog still settles on most of these cities. According to most reports, today Linfen is an environmental catastrophe:

“The atmosphere contains solid particles of fly ash, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, lead and arsenic that come down in the lightest drizzle. What the locals call Heiyu, black rain, falls frequently here. Soot-covered cars slush down greasy black streets. Black gunk oozes from mudguards. There are coal-black brick walls, silt-black street lamps, dark and creepy cave-black windows. Black isn't a shade in Linfen; it's an entire palette.

The city’s ancient temples and towers (some more than 700 years old), are rapidly deteriorating in the atmosphere. Acid rain falls on an estimated one third of China’s territory. In Linfen, it makes the buildings cry. Black lines streak down their walls like running mascara. Throughout the city, piles of coal are stockpiled outside homes. While Shanxi’s air pollution is mainly caused by coal combustion, residents still use the harmful black bricks to heat their homes.

Shanxi is one of China’s poorest provinces; it simply can’t afford other forms of heating. The level of sulfur dioxide gas in the atmosphere exceeds World Health Organisation standards many times over…. The peasants who eke out a living suffer in this noxious atmosphere. Regular exposure to airborne toxins leads to bronchitis, pneumonia and lung cancer. Then there’s the water. Ingesting it leads to chronic arsenic poisoning, or Arsenicosis, which causes peripheral vascular disease, gangrenous feet (known as "black foot disease"), skin lesions, diabetes, reproductive disorders and cancers of the bladder, kidney and lung.

Linfen is right in the heart of Shanxi Province which is itself the heart of China’s coal mining and home to the countries most mines and certainly the most illegal mines. Linfen has around 400 mines alone. In January a gas blast in an illegal mine in Fenxi killed 20 miners. In early 2008, 17 officials from the Linfen Xinyao coalmine were jailed after a gas blast in December 2007 killed 105 miners. In March 2007, another blast killed 32.

Also last year, the owner of a mine in Shanxi was jailed by a court in Linfen city for hiring four men who beat to death a reporter and injured  his colleague. Lan Chengzhang, was allegedly investigating unlicensed mines in Shanxi when he was beaten after requesting an interview with the mine owner. The case sparked discussion on the growth of ‘fake’ reporters who receive and ask for bribes from mine owners in exchange for not writing a story. The owner received a life sentence while the four men received various terms of imprisonment.

Sources: SCMP, Xinhua, Reuters, China Daily, The Guardian

IHLO
September 2008