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Journalism of Courage
Accident rate in coal mines shows that the inefficiencies that hit production undermine safety
The rate of accidents per 1,000 coal miners began improving since the nationalisation of coal mines in the 1970s,but statistics show that the pace of improvement plateaued by 2003-04. As a report in this paper showed,in 2008-11 there were 399 accidents that led to 322 deaths and 55 workers being injured in mines operated by state-owned Coal India Ltd,Neyveli Lignite Corporation and Singareni Collieries. The major causes for the high rate of accidents in coal mines include roof and side falls in underground mine; mishaps during surface transport by dumpers,trucks and other heavy earth-moving machinery in opencast mines; and leaks of gases like methane.
Countries like the US and Australia have better safety records for coal mines than India in the same period. Australia,incidentally,is a global leader in this respect even though more of its mining is underground while a good percentage of the work in India is open-cast. In 2010,Coal India had sent a team to learn from some of these experiences but,by all accounts,the results are yet to show. In the context of the current denationalisation debate on coal,however,this much is clear: an improvement of the safety record is inextricable from and coterminus with the rise in productivity.
