The Wall Street Journal-20080124-Politics - Economics- China Toughens Stance on Workplace Safety
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Politics & Economics: China Toughens Stance on Workplace Safety
BEIJING -- Chinese officials announced a crackdown on workplace accidents, even as officials maintain there have been no major accidents at Olympic sites.
Tuesday, the government announced it had meted out punishments, ranging from demotions to life imprisonment, to 183 people responsible for five major accidents in coal mines and construction sites around China, according to the state-owned Xinhua News.
Separately, Beijing also announced it would be halving the number of cars on the roads during the Games, according to the state-run China Daily. The Beijing government has been widely expected to institute measures to control traffic to reduce the city's serious pollution levels, which athletes worry could hinder their performance.
There are signals that the Chinese government is increasingly sensitive about questions concerning worker safety tarnishing the Games as the Beijing 2008 Olympics approach and armies of workers scramble to finish projects.
China's senior safety inspector, Li Yizhong, told reporters Tuesday that he was ordering a probe into reports that workers may have been killed building the Beijing National Stadium, the main staging site for the 2008 Olympic Games.
A recent Sunday Times of London story reported that 10 or more workers were killed during the construction of the stadium, nicknamed the Bird's Nest, for its latticework of curving steel.
Referring to the allegations, Mr. Li said, "If there were such accidents, serious punishment would be given to those responsible according to the law."
Sun Weide, spokesman for the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games, said the report isn't true, and maintains that there have been no "major" construction accidents at Olympic sites.
Wang Wei, secretary-general of Bocog, acknowledged in a recent interview that there may be some underreporting of accidents. "We pay a lot of attention to worker safety." He added, "for some time now, we're trying to give the accurate truth of what's going on."
Construction and engineering experts say that Beijing's tally of workplace accidents is unrealistically low, especially since Beijing currently has an estimated one million workers laboring in 10,000 construction sites. In 2006, there were 65 construction fatalities in Beijing, according to newspaper China Construction Daily, which is part of the Ministry of Construction.
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Kersten Zhang contributed to this article.
