GUANGZHOU: This southern Chinese city will soon issue a production safety supervising regulation on local industrial corporations to ensure a citywide "safe production" environment.

Sources with the city's production safety administration indicated that the regulation is currently being discussed by local lawmakers and it will be put into effect by the end of this year.

"The regulation, which will specify responsibilities between work units and government institutions, is of great importance to supplement the existing production law," the administration director, Liang Xingxia, told a press conference early this week.

Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, issued a local production law early in 2000.

"The production law has played a big role in preventing accidents. But we should strengthen law enforcement on industrial corporations as they are the major entities responsible for production safety," Liang said.

According to Liang's department, the city has witnessed a total of 3,319 work safety accidents during the first five months of this year, down 50.4 percent compared to the same period of last year.

"Although the number of accidents has been dropped, the direct economic loss climbed to more than 35 million yuan ($4.49 million) during the period since accidents took place in a growing number of larger work sites," Liang said.

Particularly, the number of accidents in construction sites has been rising during the previous five months, Liang said.

"As a result, we will strengthen efforts on supervising such larger construction projects by enforcing a strict regulation," Liang said.

Under the draft regulation, all work units will be strictly required to carry out their responsibilities for safety production, he said.

In another development, government institutions will strengthen inspection and supervision efforts on industrial corporations. Moreover, they will be also required to strictly enforce the regulation.

"Work units will receive more serious economic and criminal punishment by related government institutions if they fail to enforce the regulation," Liang said.

The city will also improve first-aid facilities on some major industrial areas, including sectors of chemicals, waterway transportation, oils, power plants and water supplies, he added.

"We will soon build a comprehensive system consisting of specialists and a coordinative command center, to provide efficient first aids once large production safety accidents take place in such areas," Liang said.

Since industrial corporations hold major responsibilities for production safety, they will also be required to offer "safe production" training to employees, he said.

"The training will be of great importance to ensuring production safety since most of larger industrial corporations, especially in the construction sector, have employed a great number of farmers, who usually have no knowledge about production safety," Liang said.

The city will also launch a month-long event starting from the coming weekend, to promote production safety awareness among local residents.

(HK Edition 06/08/2007 page6)