Lawmakers urge more enterprise responsibility for work safety

Measures should be taken in order to push enterprises to take more responsibility and make more efforts to improve workplace safety, Chinese lawmakers said on Wednesday.

The National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee heard a report on China's workplace safety on Tuesday which said the situation has improved but many problems remain.

Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, told national lawmakers at the bimonthly session from Monday to Sunday, that his team would continue their work clearing up hidden dangers and punishing illegal activities.

Lawmakers pointed out that more pressure should be put on enterprises, which are directly responsible for work safety.

Wang Naikun, a NPC Standing Committee member said enterprises and their owners should pay if they fail to ensure work safety and cause accidents.

"If they cannot avoid accidents, (we must ensure that) the cost of the accidents will take them down," she said at a panel discussion on the report.

China's revised Workplace Safety Law, which took effect on Dec. 1, imposed harsher punishment on offenders.

Adopted in August, the amendment stipulates fines ranging from 200,000 yuan (32,500 U.S. dollars) to 20 million yuan for enterprises involved in serious workplace accidents, depending on the resultant losses.

While under the old law, fines for enterprises violating the law were no more than 100,000 yuan or less than five times the income earned from the illegal operations.

Another Standing Committee member Yao Sheng suggested the committee carry out inspections on the enforcement of the Workplace Safety Law.

Han Xiaowu, a committee member, proposed blacklisting enterprises lacking adequate work safety capacity. They will face restrictions in borrowing money and land use once being put onto the list.

He also suggested establishing a national work safety standard for certain industries, which can be followed by enterprises.

Small mines, small chemical manufacturers and firecracker producers with no safety capacity account for more than 80 percent of producers, according to Tuesday's report.

More than 70 percent of miners, construction workers and firecracker makers have not received safety training and often operated outside basic workplace rules, Yang said in the report.

Several Standing Committee members have been monitoring the problem.

Du Liming said the government should figure out how to solve the problem instead of merely pointing it out.

He proposed a five or ten year training plan which could cover all workers.

"Workplace safety will further improve if we get them well trained," he said.

China's workplace safety record has improved in recent years with both the number of accidents and fatalities down. In the first 11 months this year there were 269,000 accidents, down 4.7 percent on the same period last year. Fatalities dropped by 6.1 percent to 57,000, according to the report.