The state work safety watchdog announced in Beijing on Monday that, to date, 497 officials have withdrawn their investments in coalmines.

Li Yizhong, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, said that these are only preliminary figures based on reports filed from nine provinces including Guizhou, Hunan and Hebei.

A final national report will be released by mid-October, Li said.

China issued a circular on August 30 requiring all officials with investments in coalmines to withdraw their stakes by September 22.

According to the circular, any official failing or refusing to do so would be removed from his post.?

Among the 497 officials who have done as instructed, 325 are government officials and 172 are company officials in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Li said.

Collusion between mine owners and officials is to blame for the spate of accidents in coalmines, industry insiders said. Some coalmines are owned, or partly owned by local officials. As a result of which, many escape mandatory inspection.

In the Daxing coalmine disaster, which claimed 123 lives in Guangdong last month, the mine owners turned out to be local people's congress delegates.

In March, an explosion killed 18 miners in Heilongjiang. The owner of the Xinfu Coal Mine was the deputy director of the local work safety administration.

The fat profits to be had in China's coalmining business have created overnight millionaires in the past year. And others are lured by the promise of fortune.

Coalmine owners in north China's Shanxi Province reportedly said that everybody knows the coal industry is profitable, but only those who have connections with local officials can make money.

Some government officials hold stakes in the local small coalmines. But they are not technically investors. Their power drives mine owners to give them free shares, said a mine owner in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Li said the agency will crackdown on officials who either have investments in coalmines or hold the so-called free stakes.

(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2005)