Accident Investigation System in Indian Mining Industry:A Case Study

Abstract

Even if the emphasis on safety in mining industry across the world is increasing, the accidents resulting in several injuries and fatalities are still taking place. Indian mining industry has suffered critically in the past from high rate of fatal and serious accidents. Accident statistics of Indian mines still shows very high rate of injuries and fatalities. The death rate per 1000 person employed in coal and non-coal mines in the year 2018 is 0.21 and 0.25 respectively. The serious injury rate in the current year is also very high. More disturbing is the fact that a few causes are repeated over the years for fatal and non-fatal serious accidents. Even though all the accidents are being investigated by different agencies and recommendations are made in each case, similar accidents are not prevented. Hence question mark is automatically put against the effectiveness of current investigation system. In this paper one fatal mine accident investigation reports have been reviewed and analysed to understand the accident causation along with the status of accident investigation system in Indian mining industry.The review highlights certain deficiencies in current investigation methodology and the author has proposed for changing the focus of investigation from human error to system deficiency along with the lessons to be learnt.