A spate of accidents has marked the resumption this month of production at many coal mines.

In Baishan of Northeast China's Jilin Province, seven colliery accidents, killing 10 miners, were reported within a fortnight in the city, a local watchdog said yesterday.

The latest tragedy, a cave-in at Fengyeling Coal Mine on Tuesday, killed one worker underground, according to an official with the city's bureau of coal mine safety.

A day earlier, three workers died in a cave-in at Dongjin Coal Mine in the city's Badaojiang District, officials said.

Each of the victims' families has been compensated 200,000 yuan (US$24,660). At the same time, the coal mine companies where the accidents happened were fined 400,000 yuan (US$49,321) per victim by the local government.

"All the coal mines in the district have been urged to suspend production for one-week safety rectification," said a bureau official, who denied to be identified.

Complex geological conditions, and poor roofing and mining technology, along with loopholes in management and supervision are the reasons behind the tragedies, according to the local government website.

A poor calibre of miners in some of the accidents is another reason behind the tragedies, said the official.

At the same time, the lack of supervisors also impedes on measures to improve the work safety situation.

"There are only 24 work safety inspectors in Baishan," said the bureau official. "It is impossible to put all the 178 collieries, mainly township ones, under the rein of the bureau."

"The poor work safety infrastructure among most of the township collieries in Jilin Province makes it prone to accidents," said Wang Dexue, vice-director of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) yesterday.

Accidents also occurred when some of the collieries resumed production before meeting safety requirements, said Wang, who just completed a supervision tour of Jilin.

Coal mining is regarded as the deadliest work sector in the nation and it reported 3,341 coal mine accidents in 2005, which killed 5,938 people. In 2006, China has planned to reduce deaths from coal mine accidents by 3.5 per cent from the previous year, said Li Yizhong, head of SAWS, earlier this week.

Source: China Daily