China's efforts to end the collusion between government officials and colliery owners, a major reason for poor work safety standards in coalmines, has seen "initial success," it was revealed yesterday.

By October 20, 4,578 officials had reported having investments in coalmines totaling 653 million yuan (US$80.5 million), said Vice-Minister of Supervision Chen Changzhi at a press conference.

To date, 473 million yuan (US$56 million) of that amount has been withdrawn, Chen said during his summing up of the two-month drive by four ministerial departments to clear collieries of official investment.

Those who have withdrawn their shares in coalmines include 3,002 civil servants and 1,576 heads of state-owned enterprises. They would be exempted from punishment, said Chen.

But criminal or disciplinary penalties would be meted out to those who made their investments through ill-gotten gains, whether through bribery or other illegal channels.

The four departments involved are the Ministry of Supervision, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration of the State Council, and the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS).

In late August, the departments launched a drive to clear the coalmine industry of shares held by officials, setting October 20 as the deadline.

Lured by huge profits, some officials abused their powers to protect owners of illegally run collieries that lacked basic work safety standards, said Li Yizhong, head of SAWS.

Collusion was particularly rampant in privately owned mines, experts said.

Hu Jianchang, vice-director of the provincial bureau of work safety in south China's Guangdong Province, took 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) in bribes and issued a safety certificate to Daxing Coal Mine on June 5, despite the fact that Daxing did not have the appropriate work safety procedures in place. A month later, a flood in the mine killed 121 miners.

Statistics indicate that about 6,000 miners are killed in colliery accidents each year as a result of work safety violations.

Government officials are prohibited, by law, from acquiring shares in unlisted companies.

According to Chen, the government will ensure that various localities check and complete the registration work as soon as possible and prevent any fraud during the share reporting process.

"We will thoroughly investigate the exact situation of the people withdrawing shares," he said.

A joint inspection group will soon be set up to check the implementation of the drive, he said.

"Those who have transferred their colliery shares to other people or are holding shares secretly will be removed from their posts outright and be held liable for administrative or criminal punishment," Chen said.

To improve safety records, SAWS has suspended operations of more than 8,600 collieries, mainly small ones that could not meet basic safety standard requirements, Li said.

(China Daily November 2, 2005)