Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang said on Monday that more efforts should be made to improve work safety nationwide, in a move to guarantee economic development and social stability.

Zhang made the remarks during a videophone conference held in Beijing aimed to improve production safety.

Progress has been made in the work of ensuring production safety during 2009, according to the vice premier, who said the death toll from work accidents dropped 8.8 percent year on year to less than 90,000 people last year.

However, the condition of work safety in China was still tough, with the number of workplace accidents and illegal practices still high, he said.

Zhang urged local governments and all departments to take more measures to guard against production accidents, improve work safety supervision and management and crack down on illegal operations, in an effort to effectively prevent severe accidents from happening.