Mine accident investigation in India: a system approach

摘要

Mining has been observed as a high-risk industry for a long time. Accident statistics of Indian mines still shows very high rate of injuries and fatalities. The current death rate per 1000 person employed in coal and non-coal mines is 0.27 and 0.40 respectively. The serious injury rate in the current year is also very high and unacceptable. More disturbing is the fact that a few causes are repeated for fatal, non-fatal and serious accidents. Even though all the accidents are being investigated by different agencies and recommendations are made against them in each cases but still similar accidents are repeated. Therefore question mark is automatically put against the effectiveness of present-day investigation methodology. In this paper a few recent fatal accidents in Indian mines have been reviewed and identified causes and recommendations analyzed. The review highlights certain deficiencies in the current investigation methodology of India. The aim of this study is to analyse the investigation report to identify the gaps in the current investigation procedure (i.e. where are we?) and suggest for changing the focus of investigation from human error to system deficiency i.e. where do we go from here?