More trained safety personnel are badly needed in the coal mining industry if tragedies are to be prevented, says an article on the website of Xinhua News Agency. An excerpt follows:

Many experts cite the severe shortage of work safety specialists at coal mining firms as a factor leading to the seemingly ceaseless series of fatal coal pit disasters.

"A bunch of management crops up with no expertise in work safety to command a group of migrant workers with no work safety awareness, which inevitably results in coal mine tragedies," said Wu Zongzhi, vice-president of the China Academy of Safety Science and Technology, when interviewed by China Youth Daily.

Compared to other high-risk industries such as the power sector, workers' income in the coal mining industry is low, which has led to a brain drain in the sector, especially in terms of trained work safety engineers.

Currently, about 70 colleges in China offer work safety management majors, turning out just 3,000 graduates every year, among whom only a small portion finally end up working for coal mining firms.

Statistics indicate 96 per cent of coal mining enterprises are inadequately staffed with engineers, especially those with degrees in mining.

Li Yizhong, director of the National Bureau of Production Safety Supervision and Administration, once warned: "Coal mines are doomed if they continue to fail to recruit college graduates."

Coal mining firms need trained work safety workers to ensure production risks be minimized.

The severe shortage of work safety professionals at coal mining enterprises is not only caused by problems in our education system, but also by the imbalanced remuneration structure in the sector itself.

It is high time the government paid proper attention to this problem and put it high on its agenda.

The authorities should devote more resources to training more work safety engineers for the coal mining industry by working out favourable policies.

At the same time they should encourage coal mining firms to introduce a proper, competitive incentives mechanism in order to retain and attract trained work safety specialists.

(China Daily August 29, 2005)