State Council Stresses Industrial SafetyChina's State Council has ordered local governments and departments concerned to take immediate measures to ensure industrial safety, in the wake of the fireworks factory explosion in south China's Guangdong Province last week.The explosion, at 8:05 am last Friday in Jiangmen City, claimed 32 lives, and injured 17 people, with 39 other still missing. Chinese President Jiang Zemin has expressed deep concern over the accident. Other senior leaders, including Zhu Rongji, Hu Jintao and Li Lanqing, have asked the Guangdong provincial government to make arrangements for safety and rescue work in enterprises throughout the province. The State Council called an emergency meeting on the subject on Saturday. It is pointed out that the central authorities have always paid close attention to production safety, and laws and regulations have been worked out for this purpose. But a series of severe accidents have occurred, which include the June 22 air crash in central China's Hubei Province, the June 22 Yangtze River shipwreck in southwest China's Sichuan Province, and an explosion at the Dianjiang fireworks factory in Chongqing Municipality. All these accidents have shown that some local governments lack a sense of responsibility. The meeting demanded that officials at all levels put production safety at the top of their working agendas. The meeting urged the Guangdong provincial committee of the Communist Party of China and the provincial government to spare no efforts to complete the rescue and restoration work in aftermath of the blast, to ensure social stability. The meeting asked local governments to extend production safety supervision work, with emphasis placed on the implementation of the production safety regulations issued by the central government and on the prevention of accidents. Local governments should to submit reports to the central authorities on progress in this work before the end of July. The meeting also called for the perfection and implementation of a production safety responsibility system which will ensure severe punishment for people responsible for such accidents. It was decided at the meeting that a State Council working group be established, composed of officials of the State Economic and Trade Commission, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Supervision and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. The group will be responsible for the supervision of the recent serious accidents and will report to the State Council. The State Council working group will go to Guangdong, Hubei, Sichuan and Chongqing to carry out an examination of the production safety work in these areas and supervise how they handle the above accidents. |
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