The head of the State Committee of Ukraine for Industrial Safety, Labor Protection and Mountain Supervision Serhiy Storchak has noted decreasing levels of accidents in the coal industry of Ukraine in 2008.
According to him, last year the most devastating accidents involving deaths were caused by mine collapses and gas emissions on Chervonolymanska and Duvanna mines.
Storchak said that the accident index in 2008 was 2.23% per 1 million tons of coal.
“According to the monitoring results, the majority of mines lack new technologies for mining deep coal layers. This is a characteristic feature of most small private mines,” Storchak said.
According to him, the committee has greatly changed its structure in Donetsk region.
“We have drastically changed the structure of Donetsk territorial department, providing maximum independence to Donetsk Mountain district,” he said.
Apart from that, according to Storchak, the role of the district head has increased and funding will be implemented through a separate procedure, “which would save [money for] our projects regarding the salaries of monitoring inspectors in the most dangerous mines”.
He also said that Donetsk structure would be a pilot project, which is to be introduced in other regions in which no structural changes were made.
