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2 October, 2006
The ICEM is alarmed at the number and scope of mining accidents that have occurred during the month of September. The Global Union Federation calls on mining houses to undertake more thorough precautionary measures regarding safety and health inside their enterprises. A look at September’s most public tragedies reveals that companies have compromised safety for greater production, spurred by the current high commodity pricing of natural resources.
Mining accidents in September brought death to hundreds of miners in India, Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. The death toll rose also in China’s mining sector in September. In Australia, a contractor was killed inside a nickel mine; in New Zealand, ICEM affiliate Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) mourned the death of a coal miner on the South Island.
India
The catastrophe that struck deep inside a coal mine in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand on 6 September is characteristic of countless accidents occurring in the mineral rich Dhanbad area which usually kill small numbers of miners regularly. Only this time, at the Bhatdih mine of state-owned Bharat Coking Coal Ltd., 54 miners died. The tragic accident occurred when methane gas caused a tremendous explosion some 460 metres underground. Miners, associated to ICEM-affiliated Indian National Mineworkers’ Federation (INMF), had plumbed to that level to extricate coal from a pit known as the 17th Incline.
Over 5,000 miners and family members gathered at the Bhatdih mine site, and were upset by management’s failure to check gas levels or other safety hazards at regular intervals. INMF President Rajendra Prasad Singh, arrived at the site immediately, together with other trade union accidents. He demanded for a high-level commission to be established to investigate the causes and identify the persons responsible.
Brother Singh stated that management must be held accountable. He also criticised management’s practice of not going underground for testing and safety checks.
Ukraine
In the Ukraine, a series of coal-mining accidents across mid-September claimed 17 miners’ lives in the eastern Donetsk region. The worst was at the Zasyadko mine, where 13 workers either suffocated or died instantly due to a gas explosion 1,300 metres underground. That tragedy occurred 20 September when 400 miners were deep in Zasyadko’s mine shafts. Sixty-one other miners were seriously injured.
Ukraine's Independent Industrial Trade Union of Miners, an ICEM affiliate, had one of its members killed and another injured in the accident. The union's President Michael Volynets is part of the investigation team.
The Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU) made a decision at its presidium to provide financial assistance to the families of the deceased in the Zasyadko tragedy. FPU has also called on member organisations to do the same.
On the same day, at the Dobropilka coal mine in the same area, three workers died of gas poisoning. They were found 450 metres down, after they had been granted permission to stop work and return to the surface because of high gas levels. On 21 September, a Ukrainian miner was crushed in a rock fall in Kirovska. Gas inhalation caused seriously trauma and injury to three miners inside the Fominske mine also on the same day.
Energy markets are partly to blame for the deadly coal-mining accidents in Ukraine, numbering 133 to date this year. The country suffers from rapidly escalating natural gas prices, and the government has ordered coal production to increase by one-third or 80 million tonnes, by 2007.
Russia
The mine tragedy in Russia’s Chita region of Siberia on 7 September was different, but no less tragic. Twenty-five miners died inside a gold mine operated by London-based Highland Gold Mining, owner of several gold mines in Russia’s Far East. The cause of the deaths inside the 105-year-old Darasun mine was a fire. Wooden supports are believed to have caught fire during welding.
What marks this negligence was that the company had no evacuation plan in place, a ventilation system was old and decrepit, and the last notation in a safety logbook was dated May 2006, according to BBC. “Many foreign companies, in order to increase their value … economise when it comes to observing industrial safety rules,” stated a Russian official from the Natural Resources Inspectorate in another published report.
Kazakhstan
In Kazakhstan, a 20 September methane explosion killing 41 in a colliery owned by Arcelor Mittal Steel turned into a full-fledged labour dispute over the course of last week. The blast occurred at the Lenin mine in the Karaganda region of the central Asian country, as 374 were working inside. The preliminary cause of the blast, determined by the Kazakh Minister of Emergency Situations, was the result of negligence and breach of safety rules.
“The cause is a lack of organisation and coordination in the operations of (maintenance),” stated Minister Shalbai Kulmakhanov. It has been determined that ventilation pipes were being repaired when the explosion rocked the mine 560 metres underground.
Six days after the disaster, coal miners struck for better working conditions and higher wages to compensate the dangerous work they do. By Friday, 29 September, they were joined by all 24,500 miners of the eight Kazakh collieries owned by Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steelmaking concern. By week’s end, 30 September, many steelworkers and iron ore miners of the India-based company – some 6,000 in total – joined the coal miners in a government-sanctioned rally at the headquarters of the company in the city of Termirtau.
New Zealand
In New Zealand on 8 September, 47-year-old Bernard Green, an EPMU member, was crushed to death when a shaft collapsed 800 metres underground near the town of Blackball on the South Island’s west coast. He was employed by Roa Mines, a private NZ coal company.
His death prompted the EPMU to reassert a longstanding call for a return of “check inspectors” in the country’s mining industry. Check inspectors are rank-and-file workers who are trained in safety procedures and who go down with miners at each and every shift.
“Check inspectors are health and safety people who are elected by the workers,” said EPMU National Secretary Andrew Little. “They make sure the worksite is safe, the guys have the right equipment, and the right procedures are being followed.”
Little added, “Anything that minimises the danger must be pursued, and check inspectors are a good start. This is a very important issue for our guys, and we’re going to make sure their voices are heard at the highest levels.” The positions were eliminated with the reform of NZ’s Health and Safety in Employment Act.
Australia
In West Australia on 22 September, a contract worker was crushed to death by falling rocks inside a nickel mine owned by Consolidated Minerals Ltd. This occurred at the Kimbalda Beta Hunt mine. The 43-year-old victim, an airleg operator, had been working there for two-and-a-half years.