The State Administration of Coal Mine Safety announced yesterday that the bodies of the last two missing miners from the explosion in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have been found, bringing the total death toll to 83.

The region's deadliest colliery accident took place at Shenlong Coal Mine in Fukang County at 2:30 AM on Monday when 87 people were working underground, according to administration director Zhao Tiechui.

On Tuesday, the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) attributed the tragedy to overproduction, lax work safety license checks and poor management.

A SAWS research team, whose work was appraised in Beijing yesterday, said workplace deaths and injuries can be expected to continue to rise in the years leading to 2020 as industrialization accelerates.

"International experience and lessons from developed countries have already proved that in this phase of industrialization, it is easy to see occurrences of death and injury in the workplace," said SAWS Vice-Minister Wang Xianzheng.

According to a China Daily report today, the research found that when a country's per capita GDP is between US$1,000 and US$3,000, the rise in work-related deaths and injuries is difficult to curb, though it did not specify why.

A group of 14 researchers made their findings after three years of research into work safety records of countries including the US and Japan, said Huang Shengchu, president of the China Coal Information Institute, who headed the team.

"We are in such a phase of industrialization and should be highly cautious," said Huang, as Chinese per capita GDP reached US$1,000 in 2003 and is projected to rise to US$3,000 in 2020.

Huang's team was not optimistic about the chances of significantly reducing work-related deaths in this period, but added that they should greatly decrease once the country is more industrialized.

The researchers identified the years around 2010 as a particularly "sensitive time" likely to see the sharpest rise in workplace accidents.

"It doesn't mean that we have no ways to counter such a horrible trend," said Huang, "Restructuring the economy would decrease the number of deaths and injuries."

Currently, sectors such as mining, manufacturing and construction contribute the lion's share to China's economy, and deaths and injuries are prone to occur if insufficient labor protection measures are taken.

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency July 14, 2005)