The coal-mining industry steadily holds its cheerless leadership in the number of lethal injuries, with the agro-industrial complex ranking second. Tetiana Pomazanova from the Ministry of Emergencies press service told The Day that 148 Ukrainian miners had died on the job since the beginning of the year. The figures change almost every day: for example, one week alone the extraction of coal claimed the lives of nine miners. On April 26 a fitters’ team leader died in the Izvestiya Coal Mine, belonging to the Donbasantratsyt Association, as a result the violating safety rules. The day before, at the 81st Kyivan Mine, belonging to Rovenkyantratsyt, an electric locomotive crushed to death a miner at the depth of 300 meters.
Among the reasons why miners die seven times as often as workers in other industries are those specific to the industry as well as those typical of this country in general. Addressing recent Verkhovna Rada hearings, Minister of Labor and Social Policies Ivan Sakhan made public striking figures: 50 out of 216 working coal mines were commissioned over a century ago. Moreover, only eight have undergone reconstruction during the past twenty years. As a result, can it be surprising that there can be sudden blowouts of coal, rock, and gas at most of them?
It is fair to say that the latter is partially caused by complicated geological conditions. Partially indeed, because coal is extracted in similar conditions not only in Ukraine. But it is next to impossible to find a similar attitude toward safety rules. If we are persistent enough, we might perhaps find one somewhere in Africa. It is a paradox that coal is extracted in hard conditions, while industrial safety is financed according to the residual principle. As a result, Interfax-Ukraine reports, over 1.3 million safety violations have been detected in this industry the past three years alone. Even with weekends excluded, this comes to 1,187 violations a day, five and a half at every mine every day. And these are only those detected! If those who drew up the report for Mr. Sakhan did not tamper with the figures, the coal industry, in its present condition, should be pronounced an especially dangerous sector of the national economy. We must also admit that there could be far more such tragedies as the recent mass death of miners at the Barakov Pit. And only God knows why they do not happen more often, although many coal mines have created all the conditions for it.
By far the most amazing quality of our executives is to make a mess of something and then carry out reorganizations, which only make things worse. Experts think that the switching-over of ministries and agencies to functional methods of management has significantly jeopardized the sector system of labor safety control. In addition, the respective state committee is being reorganized into departments of the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies, while official labor safety functions have been transferred directly to enterprises and local administrative bodies.
One might as well order a local food store network to employ a police force to combat counterfeit goods dealers and the sales clerks who cheat and shortchange buyers. And they would surely meet the same fate, as have done labor safety services and departments in the past few years: they have been cut or even abolished altogether at many enterprises.
As a result, one man dies at work every hours on the average, while over 17,000 become occupationally disabled every year in Ukraine, a country Article 43 of whose Constitution proclaims the right of each to safe and healthy work conditions and which holds back pay, including disability pensions.
COMMENT
Oleksandr YEFYMENKO, deputy chairman, Federation of Ukrainian Trade Unions:
“The statistics are appalling: almost 250,000 coal miners were injured at work in 1993-1999, with 2,400 cases being fatal. The number of deaths per million tons of coal produced has risen almost two and a half times in the last few years (3.62 in 1999).
“Analysis shows that the main factors that cause accidents and injuries in the mines are the extremely unsatisfactory condition of their fixed industrial assets, absence of automated dust explosion monitoring and prevention systems, and acute shortage of the necessary collective and individual protection appliances.
“The conditions and safety of work are worsening not only in the coal-mining industry but also in almost all sectors of the economy. Over the past seven or eight years, the number of those working in unsafe conditions has risen from 15 to 23 percent of the total number of those gainfully employed, comprising up almost 3 million, including 500,000 women. At many enterprises, the physical depreciation of equipment, mechanisms, and structures is as high as 80%, which presents a potential danger for people. Worsened work conditions and safety have increased the number of occupational diseases several times over, while work-related injuries, especially serious ones, still occur at an inexcusably high rate throughout the country. The funding of labor safety measures is constantly declining. According to the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, the coal mining industry received to this end UAH 221 million in 1996 and only 89 million in 1998, while UAH 301.7 million and 182.3 million were spent, respectively, on removing the consequences of accidents and paying damages to the victims, which far exceeds what was spent on the creation of safe conditions of work.
“Despite the demands of the national law On Labor Safety, not a single state budget of this country has ever allocated a penny for these purposes. In spite of trade union protests, compulsory fees to labor safety funds have been canceled, which in fact caused the latter to be ruined. This has increased, as a result, annual arrears in paying compensation and lump-sum allowances to the injured and the families of the dead. As of today, these arrears come to almost UAH 650 million.”
