Beijing has renewed its call for an improvement in work safety and demanded that local authorities review all serious accidents over the past three years.
In a document jointly released by the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Supervision, the State Administration of Work Safety and the Ministry of Justice, all local authorities were told to review files of serious work-related disasters since October 2003 to ensure government policy was being implemented thoroughly, Xinhua reported yesterday. Investigation results and a blacklist of areas and departments prone to problems should be made public, Xinhua quoted the document as saying. A work safety accident would be classified as 'major' if more than 10 people died. 'If serious problems are found in the implementation of relevant policies, those who are held responsible should receive stern punishment,' the report said.
The announcement came as PetroChina vowed to look into an accident at a subsidiary's factory in Lanzhou, Gansu, that killed four workers and injured 11.
Xinhua quoted the company's deputy general manager, Wang Yilin, as saying on Wednesday that those responsible for Monday's blast should be severely punished.
Despite the central government's efforts to promote work safety and crack down on collusion and corruption, the number of accidents shows no sign of abating. The document put this down to slack local governments that failed to strictly comply with government policies.
According to government statistics, 3,049 people were killed in 134 major work-related accidents last year. Coal mine disasters accounted for almost half of the incidents, with 1,739 killed in 58 disasters.