Reporters will begin a "long march" of several cities and provinces - including Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong provinces and Shanghai, Tianjin, and Beijing - where they will interview business leaders on work safety in various industries.

The Work Safety Circuit in China was launched yesterday at a ceremony co-organized by the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS).

Reporters set out on the 4,400 kilometre-long circuit yesterday and will work until June 22, before compiling a report on problems or potential threats to work safety as well as praising those businesses which are implementing safety regulations fully.

The State Council dispatched a total of 14 panels late last month to conduct work safety supervision in ministries and central departments.

They probed safety in the civil aviation, railway, petrochemical, power and military industries, and in provinces including Guangdong, Shanxi, Hunan, Heilongjiang, Henan, Sichuan and Guizhou.

Due to the lack of occupational safety infrastructure, workplace accidents are the No 1 killer of Chinese labourers, experts said.

The SAWS' statistics revealed that more than 130,000 people were killed in workplace and traffic accidents last year.

Many people and officials are turning a deaf ear to safety warnings and allowing small pits to re-open in the expectation of high profits.

These pits are privately or collectively owned and are prone to accidents, experts said.

Illegal non-coal pits or those which have failed to meet basic safety standards should be closed, according to SAWS.

To prevent work safety accidents, experts said the work safety responsibility system and work safety regulations should be fully enforced.

And severe punishment should be given to those who ignore work safety or whose negligence results in serious accidents.

(China Daily June 10, 2002)