The government will tighten the screws on the coal mining industry after the deadly Raspadskaya mine accident, allowing officials to suspend mining if they spot problems, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday.
Putin will take immediate command of the industrial safety agency, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection, which will assume the authority to penalize managers and order temporary shutdowns of mines if they don't meet safety standards, he said at a video conference dedicated to disaster relief efforts.
Twin blasts about 500 meters underground on May 8-9 killed at least 90 people in the Kemerovo region mine earlier this month. The explosions disabled the flagship mine of Raspadskaya, which produces about 11 percent of the coal used by Russian steelmakers.
The federal safety watchdog, which now has to ask a court to act on any of its negative findings, had unsuccessfully sought a verdict to dismiss Raspadskaya director Igor Volkov over "numerous violations," Putin said.
"There has been no reaction," Putin told the conference participants in Kemerovo. "Citizen Volkov still works there and is sitting next to you in the room."
Raspadskaya said after the comments that Volkov would not resign despite Putin's misgivings about his leadership.
"Igor Volkov has not written a letter of resignation. The leadership of the company would not accept it if he did. This is our official position. He has worked as director of the Raspadskaya mine since 2003, and the entire time he has worked with first-class professionalism," Galina Kovalchuk, the mine's spokeswoman, told Interfax.
Putin's counterparts in the video conference also included billionaires Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, who part-own the Siberian mine, and regional governor Aman Tuleyev.
“I see from the statistics that expenses on safety have gone up ninefold in the last 10 years, but the number of deaths has hardly changed,” Putin told the group. “I’d like this answered.”
But while large-scale disasters capture headlines and draw politicians' attention, the general trend is that Russia's mines are getting safer, analysts said. “Generally, the death toll in Russia’s coal mine accidents is declining over the years,” said Anatoly Skryl, general director of research company Rosinformugol. “Splashes like this year or 2007, when 242 people died in mine blasts, are spoiling the trend.”
The ratio of mine deaths per 1 million metric tons of coal production declined to 0.18 last year (54 dead per 301 million tons produced) from about 1 in the early 1990s, Skryl said. Russian coal producers invested almost $12 billion during the last 10 years in mine development, which resulted in increasing safety, Skryl said.
Putin urged mine owners to raise miners' base salaries to 70 percent of what they generally make if the pay includes bonuses for higher production. Miners, who now receive 40 percent to 50 percent of their wages in such bonuses, often neglect safety rules to earn more.
Raspadskaya miners earn about 40,000 rubles a month if they meet production goals, or 60 percent more than their base pay, Kovalchuk said.
(MT, Bloomberg)