SOMA/ISTANBUL/LONDON, May 28 (Reuters) – Taner Yildirim was never surprised when safety inspectors turned up at the Soma mine in eastern Turkey, where 301 miners were killed this month just weeks after inspectors gave it a clean bill of health. He said he always had plenty of warning.
“They (management) tell us about a few weeks prior to the inspection; so we get ready,” the miner, who wasn’t working on the day of the disaster, told Reuters. Even then, he said there was no need to go to too much trouble to prepare for the visit.
“All the inspections I have seen are on paper. They are ‘office-based’ inspections. The plant managers and the inspectors are hand in hand and drink tea at the managers’ office,” said Yildirim, who has worked at the mine for 13 years.
The Labour Minister could not be reached directly, but his ministry, which is primarily responsible for regulating mine safety, declined to comment.
The governing AK Party has said the mine had been inspected 11 times over the past five years, sometimes unannounced, and denied there were loopholes in mining safety regulations.
The government is currently investigating the cause of the Soma disaster, so it is not yet clear if flaws in the safety regime contributed to the deaths.
Soma Mining, the company that operated the mine, has denied any negligence but has not responded to questions from Reuters on its dealings with safety inspectors.
Erkan Tas, 34, a miner in another of the mines run by Soma Mining, said perfunctory inspections were the norm.
“They do go down inside the mine, but then the management does not really show them the problematic areas. They don’t let them wander around; it’s a controlled inspection. They show them the parts of the mine which are in good shape,” he said.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been the focus of protests in the wake of the disaster, which followed a string of smaller fatal mine accidents, from demonstrators angry at what they see as a failure to ensure work safety standards.
NO SPECIFIC GUIDELINES
Turkish mining experts said the country’s rules and guidelines are not as extensive as some other countries. Turkey does not even have a specific set of safety regulations for the coal industry, said Dr. H. Sebnem Düzgün, a professor with the mining engineering department of Middle East Technical University in Ankara.
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