Shanxi Province is tightening up management and disciplinary actions related to work-safety accidents nearly two weeks after a deadly coal mine blast killed 78 people, the provincial government told Xinhua on Thursday.

Work place accidents must be reported within an hour to relative authorities, which should immediately notify the provincial government within an hour, according to an emergency plan on accident and disaster control issued last week.

The circular ruled that the whole reporting process should not take more than two hours before it reaches the provincial government and those who failed report accidents in a timely manner or attempted to cover up the accidents will face strict administrative or criminal penalties.

Also last week, the provincial government issued another rule that stipulates that a coal mine will fail in the regular business assessment once an accident leaving 10 or more deaths takes place.

Mines will face business suspension or reform and their leaders will have slim chances of being promoted if the assessment results are negative.

The regulations were released after a coal mine explosion killed 78 people and injured 114 others in Tunlan colliery on February 22.

The provincial coal industry work safety supervision administration immediately launched a massive colliery overhaul three days after the accident. The administration has found safety problems in 55 state-owned coal mining enterprises as of last month and ordered operation suspension.

The administration has dispatched six teams to inspect all the coal mines across the province. The overhaul will last until February next year.

Shanxi, boasting abundant coal resources in north China, contributes one-fourth of China's coal output, but it also suffers great casualties in frequent work place accidents.

The province adopted eight major measures to improve management and discipline of the coal mining industry after Wang Jun, former head and party chief of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), took office as the deputy governor in September last year.

Wang, elected the governor of Shanxi at the beginning of this year, said last month that work safety situation in the coal-rich province remained grim despite the government's continuous efforts in cracking down upon unsafe and illegal production practices.

The governor blamed tremendous human and economic losses to the fact that many policies were difficult to enforce.

On September 8 last year, a deadly landslide triggered by the collapse of an illegal mining dump killed at least 277 people, and forced Meng Xuenong, the then Shanxi governor, to resign.

By the end of 2008, Shanxi registered 2,598 small coal mines, each with an average coal production capacity of 360,000 tonnes a year. Such small and sometimes sub-standard collieries pose serious safety threat due to inadequate protection equipment and measures, said Wang Chonglin, an officials with Shanxi's coal industry bureau.

"We must chop down sub-standard mines and improve the annual production capacity of every colliery to more than 900,000 tonnes by promoting advanced mining technologies," said Wang.

The province plans to close 1,500 small mines in two years, he said.

"Fostering large and capable coal mining enterprises is expected to be an effective way to reduce work place accidents," said Wang Hongying, a researcher with Shanxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.

The province has worked out plans to foster at least three coalmining groups with an annual output capacity of more than 100 million tonnes, four with 50 million tonnes and ten with 10 million tonnes.

Earlier SAWS statistics showed that the death rate of coal-mine accidents in China dropped 20.4 percent year on year to 1.182 per million tonnes of coal output in 2008.

The death toll stood at 91,172, down 15.1 percent from the previous year. It was the first time since 1995 the figure fell below 100,000.

Statistics from the Shanxi provincial coal mining watchdog showed that the region registered 12 accidents with casualties in the first three months of the year, four less than the same period of last year.

(Xinhua News Agency April 24, 2009)