Legislature focuses supervision on workers' safety, environment
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-03-09 10:07

The Chinese legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, has saved many lives by its law enforcement inspection activities that have led to closure of many deadly mines and polluting plants.

"The law-enforcement supervision work by the NPC Standing Committee is aimed at defending people's fundamental interests," said Wu Bangguo, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, in his work report to a plenary meeting of the Fourth Session of the Tenth NPC on Thursday.

The NPC Standing Committee inspected the implementation of six laws, including law on work safety and law on water pollution prevention and control in 2005, the top lawmaker said. "Work safety incidents, which always involve sacrifice of human lives, attracted wide public attention. Therefore, in 2005, the NPC Standing Committee examined the work safety law implementation from various aspects," Wu said.

The NPC Standing Committee found a series of protruding problems in coal mine production safety area by hosting more than 60 forums and organizing lawmakers to conduct field study in more than 70 enterprises and over 30 coal mines, he said.

To better resolve the problems, the legislature raised a series of suggestions to the government "to reduce the number of severe gas explosion cases in two years, improve work environment of small coal mines in three years, and expand the industrial injury insurance system in the nation's all the high-risk industries by the end of 2006," he said.

As a result, the government closed down 5,243 illegal coal mines and coal mines without enough work safety facilities last year. And government officials have withdrawn 562 million yuan worth of stakes from those illegal coal mines following the order from the Central Government.

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