Working a bloody seam

Working a bloody seam

Bagdigi and Chandrapur are now just footnotes from a tragedy that took place in February. But in the Pench East Incline coalmine of the Western Coalfields Limited (WCL), disaster’s still hanging around on the sidelines.

Running along the Pench river in the coal valley of the Satpura Hills, this underground mine is precariously close to an abandoned open cast mine which turns into a lake during rains. ‘‘Every day when we come out of the mine, we feel we’ve come out from the clutches of death,’’ says Nathuram (name changed).The seepage of water into this underground mine from these two sources is so high that its water has to be pumped out of its Four A-17 seam every shift so that the next shift can work, say insiders. The scene is repeated in seam Five B-2 where an SDL is operating.

While risk assessment at Pench East Incline is a expert job, even a casual visitor can see that the barrier between it and the Pench East open cast mine has thinned down. The open cast mine was closed last year, but the excavated area hasn’t been filled in yet.

This despite the categorical recommendation of the Ninth Conference on Saftey in Mines on Preventing Mine Disasters from Inundation: ‘‘Surface excavation and disturbance in or near major sources of water, which are connected to below ground working, should be filled up completely.’’

Nobody in the WCL management, however, wants to talk about it. Officers insist that the mine is safe, but clammed up when asked why the Pench East Incline was closed for ten days last year following water seepage from the open cast mine. ‘‘We are not supposed to talk to the press,’’ they shrugged.

‘‘This attitude of concealment instead of open discussion and corrective action is the bane of coalmine safety in India,’’ regrets trade unionist Dr Basant Kumar Rai. ‘‘But we can minimise future accidents only if we are prepared to learn from the past ones!’’ he argues.

The Satpura II mine of the Pathakheda area in the Chindwada-Betul coalfield is considered one of the ‘‘safest’’ mines of WCL. It has won the latest national safety award for the second time in three years.

But in this “safe” mine, an SDL operator, Lalmani Jagpati, was killed last year when he was driving an SDL down the drift to lower workable seem.

An overman, Sahablal Soni, died following a roof fall in the PK-2 mine of the same area the same year.

Pathakheda is one of the best areas under the WCL in terms of natural seam and roof conditions, says Dr B.K. Rai of of the BMS Coal Federation. The situation is worse in adjoining Kanhan and Pench areas where over a dozen mines are highly accident-prone.

However, the accident rate in Pathakhera has also been climbing. During the last two years, it has witnessed three fatal and half a dozen serious accidents. ‘‘These accidents occurred only because the management ignored observance of safety regulations to maximise its profit,’’ says CITU leader Vijay Bahadur Rai.The Directorate General (Mine Safety) had identified eight WCL mines as accident-prone for the year 2000. Six of them including Tawa (Pathakhera) Damua (Kanhan) and Ganapati (Pench) are still running.

Local workers in Pathakhera, Pench and Kanhan coalmines areas, however, insist that the number of accident-prone mines is much larger.

The Damua mine, for instance, witnessed five fatal and four serious accidents during the last two years before it was declared accident-prone. It’s no better in other mines: Mohan (seven), Ghorwari (six), Nandan I and II (five each), Ambara and R Khan (four each).

Off the record, DGMS officials admit the scene is bleak. While major mishaps like those in Bagdihi, Chandrapur, Kavdi and Majri beg our attention, the toll of smaller accidents, which go unnoticed, is steadily increasing.

‘‘Safety for mining in India suffers from an implementation gap good policies or legislation not actually carried out on the ground.’’ Says Radheyshyam, president of the INTUC sponsored National Coalmine Workers. Workers leaders at the ground level support him. In Pathakhera, they complain about supply of sub-standard mining shoes and outdated self-rescuers, in Pench and Kanhan area they accuse the management of ignoring all safety rules to meet production targets.

Widespread use of contract labour adds to the problem. ‘‘Untrained and improperly supervised, they are vulnerable themselves and endanger the permanent mine workers as well,’’ says CITU leader Lochan Prasad. He refers to a recent study by the DGMS in Orissa, which found that all the fatal accidents in open cast mines involved contract workers, although they were only 50 per cent of the workforce.

There is evidence that fatal accidents to contract workers are not recorded, and thus don’t show up in the statistics. And the growing obsession of managements with meeting production targets and the increasing fear psychosis among coalmine workers could also cause accidents without any tangible reason, says Kalika Prasad, a BMS activist.

He refers to a recent case on the accident-prone Damua mine of Kanhan area, where Rajendra Tewari almost walked into death. ‘‘He was a tube loader. While travelling at the 26th level, he heard a sound and got so scared that he ran away only to fall down and die!’’ Prasad says.