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KHADIM Faqir (not his real name), 27, still remembers the fateful day nearly four years ago when the 1,200-metre-deep coal mine he was working in, collapsed. Days later when he regained consciousness, he found himself paralysed waist down. He never walked again. Struggling with scores of injuries, applications, affidavits, photocopies, attestations, certificates, X-rays and hospital reports, he still awaits the release of the promised Rs300,000 — the meagre compensation promised to permanently disabled miners.
Abid Yaar, general secretary of the Shangla Coal Mine Workers’ Association, says that 8,543 miners in the past 40 years had become permanently disabled either because of an initial accident or having developed other diseases as a result of prolonged exposure to coal dust in the mines.
Halim Khan, general secretary, Pak Central Mines Labour Federation, has compiled data for 237 miners who died in mine accidents across Pakistan in 2024. He estimates the number of disabled to be much higher. The government has little data of registered coal mines, let alone the thousands of unregistered mines that operate unchecked in broad daylight. Ironically, the disability compensation is available only to the workers of registered mines. Is it a disabled miner’s fault if the mine he worked in was not registered by the government?
Mine accidents, if not fatal, often leave the miners with lifelong disabilities like broken vertebrae or clogged lungs. Receiving the government disability compensation, a mere pittance at Rs300,000, involves labyrinthine procedures conspicuous by complexity and runarounds.
Even injured miners are not spared complex official procedures.
Consider a real-life example of a recent advertisement for grant of financial compensation to disabled miners. The government expects an illiterate disabled (possibly paraplegic) miner in a remote village to accomplish the following tasks by Feb 20, 2025 (why a cut-off date?). The miner must log on to a computer, go to a given website and fill, download, and print a registration form and an application form. The printed forms must then be taken to the lease holder for his verification signature and stamp. Next, the miner must visit the district assistant commissioner for mines, for his approval (or rejection) signature and stamp.
The disabled miner must also prove his disability by going to a government hospital for examination and obtaining a disability certificate. This certificate along with the X-rays and photographs of his injuries must then be presented to the provincial Social Welfare Department for verification and approval. As if this backbreaking ordeal were not enough, the disabled mine worker must also visit the inspector of mines to obtain a certified copy of the accident’s inquiry report.
The complete set of documents, ie, approved forms, copies of CNIC duly attested by a Grade 17 or above officer, Schedule A (whatever that may be), an appointment letter (almost never given to a miner) signed and stamped by the lease holder, the Social Welfare Department’s approval certificate, and a certified copy of the inquiry report must be put together and submitted to the Mines Labour Welfare Department. Those familiar with bureaucratic inefficiencies can imagine the number of visits, waiting times, objections raised, and the ‘chai pani’ built into each of these processes. The insurmountable requirements could take months, if not years. No wonder, in 2024, only 29 disabled miners could cross this hurdle — in a province that is home to the largest number of disabled miners.
Here are some specific recommendations that could radically simplify these irrational complexities. Begin by implementing the 187-page ILO Code of Practice for Safety and Health in Coal Mines. Next, register every mine, however small, and assign a unique digital identity. Establish a live web-based database of all mines. Details of each miner’s CNIC (to avoid child labour), EOBI number, appointment letter, training certificate, photograph and safety equipment provided must be uploaded on the website before a miner is permitted to enter a mine. Each mine’s database must also include accidents, deaths, injuries, inquiry reports, and third-party audit results. Thus, a disabled miner would never be required to provide a single document or visit a single office, if all information was already there in government records.
The only way to break the cycle of utter incompetence, greed and callousness of the government departments is to make the entire system digitally transparent, not just for the mine departments, but also every citizen of Pakistan. Absence of information has crippled the safety and lives of our mine workers.
The writer is an industrial engineer and a volunteer social activist.
Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2025
