Diana Beaumont

In January this year AMRC co-organized a rare gathering of grassroots organizations, trade unions, government officials and company managers for a discussion on occupational safety and health (OSH) in the coal mining sector. An international delegation including six members from China (including academics, NGO staff and company managers), one from the Philippines and one from Bangladesh, visited Dhanbad in the North-East Indian state of Jharkand, and shared views on the challenges to protecting the health and safety of coal mining workers.

The importance of South-South exchange

AMRC has been linking Indian and Chinese mining activists for the past five years, because we see the value in exchanges between comparable developing economies. For a long time now, India and China have had exchanges with experts from advanced Northern economies. These exchanges largely focus on technological solutions to OSH problems. But the root cause of OSH problems in developing economies is not just lack of technical expertise. The best mines in China and India are technologically very advanced. The roots of OSH problems lie in poverty, lax law enforcement, and weak workers’ organizations. This meeting gave Indian and Chinese participants a platform on which to exchange strategies to combat these problems.
In 2006 AMRC supported Indian NGO mining activists to travel to China and attend a conference on OSH in Chinese coal mines hosted by Beijing’s Renmin University, as well as visit a high-tech state-owned coal mine. The recent meeting in Dhanbad built on this earlier exchange. It was organized by AMRC together with Indian partners the ASEI Trust, the Indian National Trade Union Congress, the People’s Training and Resource Centre, and the government regulatory body, the Directorate General of Mine Safety. The meeting was also attended by experts in the mining area, medical experts, NGO activists, and trade union activists from various institutions including the Indian School of Mines, Mines Minerals and People, the All India Trade Union Congress, etc.  
The exchange included a two-day conference from 21 to 22 January 2008. At this exchange, participants presented the situations in different countries, the reasons for accidents and disease among mining workers, and the steps that certain companies and government departments are taking to protect workers’ safety. Delegates also made visits to an open-cast (above-ground) mine and an underground coal mine, and met with prominent coal mining enterprises Coal India Limited and its subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Limited (both public sector companies), and a private coal mine company operated by the Tata group.

The Chinese-Indian comparison

Discussions drew out both differences and similarities between the Chinese and Indian coal industries. A topic of great concern for Indian delegates was the very high accident rate in Chinese coal mines. The China Daily itself cites statistics which attributed approximately 80% of coal mining deaths worldwide to China in 2004 (13 November 2004). Chinese delegates pointed out that the accident rate is relatively higher in China because underground mining is much more common than in India. Coal seams in China are very deep and are difficult to mine. Underground mines produce approximately 95% of China’s total coal output. By comparison, in India approximately 80% of coal output comes from open-cast mines, where serious accidents are much less likely to occur. Also, the coal mines in China, which are mostly underground, are highly gaseous compared to Indian mines, resulting in higher accidents in China due to explosions in these mines.
It was agreed that in both countries the majority of serious accidents occur in small, privately-owed mines. In India over 90% of coal mines have been nationalized since 1971-3, and state ownership has led to improvement the regulation of OSH. Trade unions and NGOs are concerned about the safety of workers in the private sector and non-coal sector. The Chinese delegates reported that the Chinese government also recognizes the problems in small private mines. Since 2005 it has shut down approximately 10,000 small private mines, thus reducing the incidence of accidents. In both countries, these mines are staffed largely by migrant workers from poor rural areas, who are not represented by unions.

Mining exchange participants: Indian mining managers and miners with (from centre to right) Noel colina, Sun Shuhan, Bikash Kumar and Zhao Jing     Photo: Noel Colina

The meeting included experts on social security who discussed systems of insurance and compensation for workers. According to Chinese delegates from the Pingdingshan Mining Company in Henan, in the case of death, coal workers’ families are legally entitled to a lump-sum of at least 25-30,000 RMB in compensation (US$3,500 – 4,175), in addition to ongoing payments to dependents. When accidents happen in private mines, workers often have no insurance, and mine owners quietly negotiate ad-hoc lump-sum compensation with the workers’ families. In India, in the case of a mine workers’ death in Coal India Limited, the company offers his family a compensation amount of Rs 500,000 (US$12,600) and a job is then offered to a member of his/her family. However, this does not apply to all other coal mines, especially not the ones that are operated at a very small scale. The Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1923 is the guiding law for claming compensation. However, the procedure is lengthy and cumbersome and many workers give up their compensation claims half way through, due to poor health and also due to financial burdens. The situation is worse in the informal sector where workers are exposed to hazardous working conditions and have none or minimal protection in terms of social security.   

In India, coal mine workers are legally entitled to a free medical examination every five years. In China medical examinations are required every one year. Indian trade unions and NGOs are pushing the government to reduce the duration of periodical examination from every five years to at least every one year. There have been already some recommendations to reduce the period to every one year in the case of workers aged 40 or above.  

The conference concluded with several resolutions. Participants resolved that a similar forum should be held every year, with the next one to be held in China in 2009. This should form part of a larger structure for co-operation on OSH in Asian mines, including information exchange, and public awareness-raising campaigns, and research carried out on the Asian level. AMRC was put forward as a key co-ordinating body for future exchange.
An encouraging aspect of this exchange was that it received wide media coverage and the news and issues with analysis were covered by at least six local dailies in Hindi and by one English-language