Philippine E-Journals

Safety in Indian Coal Mines – Where Do We Go from Here

Partha Sarathi Paul

 

Abstract:

The 20th century has experienced a considerable amount of success in coal mine safety in India. The mining industry has for many years focused on injury prevention at the workplace through procedures and training, and has achieved considerable success. However, the statistics on major accident events such as fatalities and reportable incidents has not shown the corresponding levels of improvement. In the area of major hazards control, the mining industry approach has emphasized mainly on past experiences and lessons learnt, while other high hazard industries such as the chemical process industry and oil and gas industry have taken system safety techniques to new highs. A literature review on quantitative analysis of mine safely studies revealed that numerous investigators explored a wide- range of techniques, including the investigation of bivariate and multivariate statistical models. It is inferred that the use of these quantitative techniques can provide a new direction of research in mine-safety studies. The important aspect, which was explored in this study through structural equation modeling, is the sequential interrelationships amongst the personal, social, and technical factors leading to accident/injury causation. Interestingly, the accident-involved workers are more job stressed, more job dissatisfied and hence, less job involved and often get bored with their jobs. The level of dissatisfaction in mines is quite expected. Further research should be performed using national data set so that the findings can be generalized to all segments of the mining industry.