China’s State Council orders national chemical investigation

The State Council has ordered a national inspection on potential hazards of dangerous chemicals and safety assessments on all chemical industry parks across the country after an explosion in East China's Jiangsu province killed 78 people.

A rescuer works at the site of an explosion at a chemical industrial park in Xiangshui County of Yancheng, east China's Jiangsu Province, March 22, 2019. [Photo: Xinhua/Li Bo]

An urgent notice issued by the Work Safety Committee of the State Council asked authorities related to safety production nationwide to strictly follow the instruction President Xi Jinping made after the Thursday blast in a chemical industry park in Xiangshui county of Jiangsu.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, instructed local governments and relevant departments to learn the lesson hard, tighten safety hazard check, seriously implement the accountability system for workplace safety, so as to prevent major any safety accidents and ensure the safety of people's lives and property.

The notice from the State Council, released on Monday, deployed a thorough examination on potential hazards of dangerous chemicals across the country. All chemical industry parks should undergo safety risk assessments, it said.

Local safety production authorities should conduct careful inspections on nitration-related processing plants and enterprises that produce or store nitrated compounds, according to the notice.

Law enforcement in the sector should be intensified and not be a flash in the pan. "(We should) make the law enforcement 'bite', and severely punish those enterprises and individuals that are indifferent to laws and lives," the notice said.

To help improve the supervision capability at the grassroot-level, the committee has called for organizing more experts to such places to offer guidance. Undercover inspections are also measures to be taken.

The committee also urged relevant departments to improve emergency response mechanism to effectively handle safety incidents, and increase early warnings on geological disasters.

There should be officials on duty 24 hours a day and information report must be timely, according to the notice.