By Zhang Lulu
China will ramp up its efforts in safety supervision and reduce major risks in key areas in the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), the Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM) said Monday.
Su Jie, spokesperson of the Ministry of Emergency Management, speaks at a policy briefing in Beijing on Feb. 14, 2022. [Photo by Xu Xiang/China SCIO]
China has reported no extremely serious accidents for 28 consecutive months, which set a new record, MEM Spokesperson Su Jie said. However, she also warned of major challenges in production safety, citing accidents in key sectors such as coal mines, construction, and transportation in 2021.
"Extremely serious accidents" are defined as those resulting in 30 or more deaths, 100 or more serious injuries, or 100 million yuan or more of direct economic losses, according to China's regulation on work safety.
In the next four years, the ministry will carry out comprehensive safety management of dangerous chemicals throughout China, with the goal of reducing the total number of accidents involving hazardous chemicals as well as related major accidents, Su said.
The ministry will also work on the safety of chemical industrial parks, implementing five major programs through 2025. These include increasing the safety of chemical industrial parks, risk prevention and control of large-scale oil and gas storage bases, and increasing the safety of enterprises located in chemical industrial parks, Su said.
Old gas pipelines will also be renovated to prevent related accidents, Su said, adding that the authority has identified some 100,000 kilometers of pipelines to receive renovations through 2025. The ministry has also urged all workplaces across China to install gas leakage alert systems by 2025.
