Government officials will face warnings, demotions, dismissal and prosecution for transgressions in production safety, according to new rules issued on Wednesday.

"Severe penalties are needed to tackle disorder in production safety," said Li Yizhong, director of China's State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS).

The interim rules, jointly issued by the SAWS and the Ministry of Supervision, define 25 types of punishable acts by government officials and 18 types by executives of state-owned businesses, including:

-- approving projects that do not meet safety requirements;

-- failure to address unsafe production activities;

-- intervention in the procurement of safety equipment and facilities;

-- failure to deal with identified major hazards, which later lead to accidents;

-- covering up production accidents, failure to provide true reports and delaying reports of production accidents;

-- obstructing investigations into production accidents;

-- personally or allowing their family members to hold stakes in coal mines or running businesses in production safety areas; and

-- executives allowing their businesses to continue operation after their licenses have been revoked or they have been ordered to stop production.

"Some regional governments value economic growth far above safety," said Vice-Minister of Supervision Chen Changzhi. "Lax law enforcement has become a ubiquitous problem."

He said some leading cadres and government functionaries did not faithfully carry out their duties. Some abused power for personal gain and acted as shields for illegal activities.

"There is no lack of such instances in the five production safety accidents the Ministry of Supervision has handled this year," said Chen.

Li Yizhong was hopeful the rules will intensify the crackdown on corruption and prevent production accidents.

Compared with September, China reported a 26.1-percent rise in coal mine accidents and a 44.4-percent rise in deaths from coal mine accidents in October.

"The situation of production safety still allows for no optimism," said Li.

Source: Xinhua