Overseas specialists help improve Chinese coal mine

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The neat and tidy control room at a northwestern China coal mine was a surprise to De Wet Mulder, who on his last visit to a Chinese pit 10 years ago was so frightened by the appalling safety measures he saw that he wanted to bolt for safety immediately.

Mulder is one of the nine specialists from Australia and South Africa who have returned from a coal mine tour to China's Gansu Province, and exchanged expertise in coal mine safety and rescue management with their Chinese counterparts, as China tries to improve the lot of its miners by accessing experience from other countries.

The program, run by the China Association for International Exchange of Personnel under the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA), has invited 58 overseas experts to the country.

On their one-day tour to the northern China province last week, the group visited a rescue center, a control room and a power plant generating electricity with coal-bed methane on the Jingyuan coal mine.

Recalling his visit to two coal mines in Shanxi Province in 1997, Mulder, the head of refuge chamber manufacturer BroKrew Industrial (Pty) Ltd. said he was chilled by the absence of emergency preparations at Chinese coal mines.

"They didn't even have seals on the electric switch. It could cause gas blasts when you turn it on and off," said Mulder. "I wanted to turn back and run out almost as soon as I went down the pit."

The modern Jingyuan coal mine that carries out 95 percent of its mining work by machines clearly updated Mulder's impression. Jingyuan Coal Industry Limited Corporation, which owns the coal mine they visited, is a state-owned coal producer which made a profit of 40.27 million yuan (5.44 million U.S. dollars) last year.

"It has improved a lot compared with the backward and dangerous mines I visited last time in China. The control rooms and the rescue centers has facilities that is up to international standard," said Mulder, but he refrained from making an early judgment of the overall condition of Chinese collieries because the coal mine is the only place they visited in the northwestern province.

Their destination is a middle-sized one among the country's countless coal mines. With an annual capacity of 8 million tons, it is dwarfed by Chinese state-owned energy giant Shenhua Group, which produced 203 million tons of raw coal last year. It ranks 59th in the nation's top 100 coal producers according to China coal Website.

Like many other coal mines in China, Jingyuan Corp. also had lost the lives of its miners to the deeps of the pit. A coal mine gas explosion blasted out in the company's Weijiadi mine in October last year, killing 29 people and injured 19. The mine manager was sacked. Earlier in May the same year, a carbon monoxide poisoning accident caused nine deaths in another mine belonging to the company.

But now the company's modern rescue center stationed by uniformed permanent staff drew applause from South Africa's Mines Rescue expert Dave Sheppard. "Although we have rescue teams for coal mines, they are volunteers who mostly work for a short time only. But they have permanent rescue staff, who are more experienced," said Sheppard.

by Xinhua writer Zhu Yifan