Ukraine’s coal industry has once again suffered a terrible accident. This regular occurrence is “distinguished” by one feature — the number of victims since the beginning of this year closely approached a round figure: 988 miners were seriously injured in an shaft collapse. 47 of them (as reported by the Coal Industry Workers Trade Union) died, in most cases having left orphans, widows, and families in which they were the only breadwinners.
It is notable that big coal enterprises, where costs for labor safety seem to be allotted in sufficient amount and the level of mechanization is much higher, made the biggest contribution to official statistics. Major contributions come from the mine management Donbas (168 victims), the state enterprise Dzerzhynsk Coal (115), the state enterprise Artem Coal (103), and the mine management Pivdennodonbaske No. 1 (76). I will come back to this issue later.
First let us contemplate the scandalous conclusion of specialists who study the influence of negative factors of coal mines on humans. According to the published results of a recent study by the Institute for Medical and Ecological Problems of the Donbas, the so-called passport and biological age of a professional miner differs by 12-15 years. In other words, a coal mine worker gives away a quarter of his life for the dubious right to earn his living underground.
No wonder the average life span of a Ukrainian miner gradually decreases: at present miner’s life expectancy is 55.
DO NOT BREATHE DEEPER!
Professional diseases, of course, are the first among many reasons of the fatal miners’ problems. Silicosis, which develops as a result of constant inhaling of coal and stone dust, is the most terrible among them. In order to protect miners’ lungs from this pervasive threat, safety rules require working at the cleaning wall only with a respirator. However, in the crammed dark holes, where the stone “ceiling” sometimes hangs at a height of less than half a meter and the temperature reaches 40 degrees centigrade and more, this requirement is often neglected. One can even look attentively at the pictures of miners who have just returned in magazines: though the mandatory “petals” of respirators are dangling on everyone’s breast, but the skin around nose and lips, which are supposed to be covered by the protective device, is treacherously black.
As a result of the safety rules violation, they inevitably become candidates for silicosis disability: respiratory tracts are entirely covered by a layer of small stone particles preventing the access of oxygen to the blood. A person literally lacks air. Other details of this widespread and actually incurable miners’ disease are for medical professionals with strong nerves.
Skin infections (from dirty mine water encountering fresh wounds), radiculitis connected with inevitable underground draughts and abrupt temperature differences are other widespread illnesses.
“Lung disease provoking complications is especially dangerous,” adds the director of the Donbas Institute for Medical and Ecological Studies Volodymyr Mukhin. “Though a number of other diseases are dangerous as well. Bronchitis, for example. The vibrations of a pneumatic pick or a powerful drill used to prepare boreholes for explosives are also extremely dangerous.”
Ordinary miners enumerate risk factors, which are rarely mentioned in official reports, such as exotic “animal” infections caught from huge mine rats that got used to hunting workers’ lunches. Miners also insist that despite consolations of sanitary services, an increased radiation level is present in underground excavations. The latest statement did not found proof “for” or “against”: the administrations of mines do not measure roentgens in the mines themselves, they try to make sure no enthusiastic activists can bring a dosimeter to a workplace.
SLEEP. WORK. PRAY
By the way, on the traditional miners’ homemade lunch. Veterans of Donetsk mines still remember the times when a working shift going underground always got high-calorie dry rations. In some places they even managed to organize hot meals right at their working places. Unfortunately, the free amenities provided by the administration (“We only need coal!”) is a thing of the past. At present a typical underground snack of a miner who works hard mostly consists of potatoes in their jackets taken from home, an onion, and lard at best.
Privileged rest and treatment also became miners’ legends. Of course, ordinary miners almost did not see permits to Crimean sanatoriums built in the Soviet times for the money of coal industry enterprises anyway. But there were preventive clinics where one could pass a course of intensive physiotherapy, drink oxygen cocktails, and get a “miner’s diet,” with a huge piece of meat three times a day. What happened to those health institutions as a result of privatization? They willingly inform you at any Donetsk mine: saying that a preventive clinic, located in a quiet place, became a dacha for a “tough guy,” another one became a closed hunting club, and somewhere else a VIP-brothel appeared.
The mass closure of coal mines in the course of the infamous “restructuring” broke the established tradition, when a miner lived not far from the mine. Now underground professionals from Makiivka cover dozens of kilometers from their native city every day to Chervonoarmiisk to “get coal for the country.” And from Torez to Selodive, patiently standing a long and shaky road in a broken-down work bus. Only a little time for sleep is left. In the mine, the owner can only make a miner’s chapel where one can put a candle before another shift, hoping this way to guarantee returning to the outer world. In fact, this is all the “cultural life” available.
RED ON BLACK
There is a notable phenomenon in Donbas at present: despite the gradual decrease of amounts of coal production, the region experiences a critical shortage of personnel. However, the secret is very simple: mines lure the so-called coal hewers and other low-qualified workers, who agree to do only physical work. What can they do if the demand for “black gold,” and, consequently, prices for it grow rapidly, but the modern underground equipment still remains inaccessible because of its astronomic price. In addition, the preparation of new powered support was actually deranged because of the recent crisis. Thus, “Stakhanov’s grandchildren” cut coal by means of pneumatic picks and wooden roofing.
There are so few modern mines with complex drifts equipped with mining combines and hydro timbering that one can count them on the fingers of one hand. At this, the competition to be employed there is very serious. When a worker does become the personnel of the cherished enterprise, this worker, be sure, will try to stay there as long as possible, silently agreeing for the exhaustive painstaking system of work, illegal exactions in cash “for authorities,” and conscious violation of safety rules in order to fulfill the plan.
Moreover, the furious competition for jobs on “proper” enterprises created a practice when a medical certificate on the satisfactory health state, which is obligatory to be employed, is simply bought in hospitals. Mine administrations try to oppose this shameful phenomenon, arranging additional medical examinations and even finding inventive ways to pay specialists from polyclinics extra for being honest. But the statistics show an alarming trend: every year a few dozens of miners die right on their workplace, being unable to endure the high temperatures and other “surprises” of coal mines.
“Analysis of lethal injuries shows that this year, every million kilos of produced coal cost 2.46 human lives,” says Oleksandr Pohrebniak, the chief technical inspector of the Trade Union of Coal Industry Workers.
In a short period of time this fatal index increased almost threefold. Miners, who are usually called “representatives of a brave profession,” today fear going to regular underground shifts. But most of them simply have no choice.
