The State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) forbids coal mine managers promoting assistants in order to avoid going underground with miners, as the State's September regulation requires, SAWS spokesman Huang Yi said.

"Coal mining companies are not allowed to send promoted assistants in place of the managers," Huang said.

The privately owned Hongshan Chaoyang Coalmining Company in Huanjiang county, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, recently promoted seven people as "assistants to managers".

The promotion is widely regarded as an attempt to circumvent the regulation, launched by State Administration of Coal Mine Safety and due to take effect on Oct 7, which requires mine leaders to descend below ground and ascend to the surface again along with mine workers.

"To prevent accidents, the coal mine leaders have to go down into the pits with workers and solve the potential safety problems," Huang was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency late Tuesday.

"The manager's assistants cannot be counted as coal mine leaders, which refers to the management, and chief and deputy chief engineers of the coal mine," said Huang.

If the managers deliberately fail to obey the regulation, the company will be liable to fines of up to 5 million yuan (US$730,000) and a ban on production if accidents occur.

"We need supervision from the miners and also the public," said Huang. "The promotions are legal behavior by the companies, but if the management have avoided their duty, they will be fined," Huang said.

Lan Zhihua, the chief manager of Hongshan Chaoyang Coalmining Company, said the company is planning to promote one of the seven manager assistants to deputy chief engineer and two of them to deputy mine manager.

"Then they can be counted as mine leaders," Lan told China Daily over the phone on Wednesday.

Although Lan claimed the mine owner was willing to go underground, he said the owner rarely comes to the mine. However, he claimed the managers did go into the pit and that he had been underground 12 times in September.