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November 6, 2012

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NZ mining disaster: Sweeping away of old laws left industry “in limbo”

New laws to improve worker participation in health and safety matters and toughen up directors’ duties should be given early attention, according to an official report into the Pike River mining tragedy in New Zealand two years ago.

The Pike River coal mine, which lies on the west coast of the South Island, exploded on 19 November 2010, due to the ignition of a large volume of methane gas. Twenty-nine men underground died immediately, or soon afterwards, either from the blast or from the toxic atmosphere. Over the next nine days the mine exploded three more times before it was sealed.

The Royal Commission report into the incident, issued yesterday (5 November), makes 16 recommendations, the vast majority of which the New Zealand Government has promised to take forward immediately. Following its release, Labour minister Kate Wilkinson resigned from her post, but retains ministerial responsibilities for other portfolios.

The Commission’s report is scathing of the roles of both the mine owner, Pike River Coal Ltd (Pike), and the previous regulator, the Department of Labour. Pike had not completed the systems and infrastructure necessary to produce coal safely, and numerous warnings of explosive or potentially dangerous volumes of methane from workers were not heeded.

The Commission concluded that the firm’s directors “did not ensure that health and safety was being properly managed, and the executive managers did not properly assess the health and safety risks that the workers were facing”.

The Department of Labour was also at fault, said the Commission, assuming, as it did, that Pike was complying with the law, “even though there was ample evidence to the contrary”. At the time of the disaster, the Department had just two mining inspectors.

Although finding New Zealand’s chief legislation – the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, based on the reforms recommended by the Robens Committee in the UK 20 years earlier – generally fit for purpose, the Commission highlighted how “necessary support for the legislation, through detailed regulations and codes of practice, did not appear. Instead, the opposite happened; such regulations, as existed, were repealed when the HSE Act came into force.”

Consequently, the new legislation swept away the special rules and safeguards present in the old legislation, leaving mining operators and mining inspectors “in limbo”.

Prime Minister John Key said: “The Commission found that while the HSE Act appropriately placed primary responsibility for health and safety on the employer, this was seen by the Department of Labour as somehow reducing its responsibility to actively administer the legislation.”

Some new mining regulations were passed, but approved codes of practice and informal guidance were never issued. As a result, concludes the Commission, New Zealand’s regulatory framework for underground coalmining is currently years behind other advanced nations and requires urgent modernisation – a proposal the Government has accepted.

Implementation of, arguably, the Commission’s most crucial recommendation – to establish a new Crown agent focused on health and safety – is, however, more in the balance, as the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety is currently consulting on what shape a new health and safety regulator might take. Nevertheless, the Government has vowed that, once the Taskforce reports on its findings, expected by 30 April next year, it will “move quickly to establish a new regulator”.

In response to a proposal to improve worker participation in underground mining, which also advocates the reinstatement of union-appointed check inspectors with mining expertise, the Government says the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment will immediately pick up the recommendation.

The Royal Commission also calls for statutory responsibilities for health and safety to be imposed on directors, noting that, as in the UK, current health and safety legislation places general duties on employers, managers and others, but not on directors.

The Government stopped short of declaring its outright support for this proposal, saying: “We will be asking the Independent Taskforce, currently consulting on these very issues, to pick up the Royal Commission’s recommendations and provide detailed proposals for strengthening health and safety governance.”

The Royal Commission report is available at: http://pikeriver.royalcommission.govt.nz/Final-Report

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Bob
Bob
11 years ago

New Zealand’s regulatory framework for underground coalmining is currently years behind other advanced nations and requires urgent modernisation.

Pike had not completed the systems and infrastructure necessary to produce coal safely, and numerous warnings of explosive or potentially dangerous volumes of methane from workers were not heeded,

While not endorsing the current UK policy on ammending H&S Reg`s, neither of the above findings were a result of watering down of H&S Regs.

Tony
Tony
11 years ago

A salutary lessons one hopes to all those involved in destroying or watering down the UK’s health & safety legislation and Approved Codes of Practice on the altar of “Red Tape” to the mantra of “Burden on Business”…..