Local officials who withheld facts and lied about the mine flooding accident in Nandan County of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have been appropriately punished.
The disaster has been termed "a serious accident resulting from dereliction of duty caused by long-term confusion in management and illegal mining.''
Investigators sent by the State Council entered the deepest shafts of the mines to determine the cause of the accident.
Wan Ruizhong, the secretary of the Nandan County committee of the Communist Party of China, county Magistrate Tang Yusheng, and county Deputy-Magistrate Wei Xueguang, were dismissed from office for "suspected dereliction of duty," according to Xinhua News Agency.
Prior to this, the three of them and deputy Party Secretary Mo Zhuanglong were dismissed from the Communist Party.
Currently, the four and other officials who were involved in the accident are undergoing interrogation.
The central government has decided to call a halt to efforts to find the remaining victim of the accident, which happened in mid-July. The local public security authority announced that 80 bodies had been found, but that one man is still missing.
On July 17, two tin mines in Nandan were flooded, but the accident was not reported until two weeks later.
Local officials, as well as mine owners, originally denied the accident had occurred, then admitted that it had but claimed that nobody had died.
They were also suspected of having bribed and bullied reporters and survivors to keep them quiet.
(China Daily 09/01/2001)
