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China announces crackdown on tide of worker deaths
16 May 2007 01:16:53 GMT
Source: Reuters
BEIJING, May 16 (Reuters) - China has launched a crackdown on deadly accidents in mines, factories and building sites, demanding that officials and managers do more to lower the tide of injury and death accompanying the nation's economic boom.

China's industrial expansion has resulted in a rash of maimings, poisonings and deaths among workers who are often poorly trained and overworked.

Past crackdowns have contained the death toll but have not resulted in any significant drop.

Inspectors will seek to correct safety lapses in the most lethal industries, including mines, metals, chemicals and construction, the office of the State Council, or cabinet, said in a notice issued late on Tuesday.

"Some major sources of danger have not been effectively dealt with and monitored, major accidents continue to occur, and the national work safety trends remain grim," according to the notice issued on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).

The nation saw a rebound in work accidents in April, a senior official said last week, blaming regulatory loopholes and lax local enforcement. Thirty-two steel workers died that month after they were engulfed in molten metal in a poorly run plant using improper equipment, investigators announced.

Coal mine, fishing, boating and traffic accidents increased "conspicuously" in the month, said Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety.

More than 4,700 of China's 5.5 million coal miners, 60 percent of whom are migrant peasant workers, died in thousands of colliery accidents last year.

The latest government crackdown calls for inspections of targeted work sites and warns officials to make safety a priority.
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A farmer waters her vegetable field on the outskirts of Yingtan, China's Jiangxi province, May 22, 2007. China's direct subsidy to its hundreds of millions of farmers will rise 63 percent from a year earlier to 42.7 billion yuan ($5.6 billion) this year, the Ministry of Finance announced on Monday, Xinhua News Agency reported.



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