Deep underground, a machine cuts blocks of coal from the earth. Wagons of coal are lifted out and transferred, with each load helping to relieve the country's thirst for energy.

Each busy shift at this mine finds mine officials and workers on the alert in a watch against death or injury in China's dangerous and troubled coal mining industry.

Those are the scenes in Shangtang, a small mining town in Fengcheng in Jiangxi Province. It has survived a string of fatal accidents since 2001 and appears to be thriving, thanks to steady coal price rises.

However, Liu Fangqin, chairman of Jianxin Coal Mine Trade Union, which represents 3,100 miners, has concerns beyond the apparent prosperity.

In the small town with a population of 40,000 residents, some 164 mining households have lost their head breadwinners in accidents or diseases related to mining.

"Mainly relying on meagre subsidies, their lives are really hard," said Liu, as she calls out for public attention to those poverty-stricken families, even though these families make up only a small percentage of the residents there.

Coal mining is dangerous and miners earn meagre wages in China. Only farmers in the poorest regions choose to earn cash as miners by necessity, turning to the mining work. Statistics indicate that most of them are from northern Sichuan, southern Shaanxi, mountainous regions of Jiangxi, Fujian and Henan provinces.

Most of them have received no education, nor have their wives or family members.

"Once they die in accidents, their families will suffer and living conditions will deteriorate," says Liu, despite the mine's efforts to help these families out.

Living in a row of one-storey tiled house with three kids, 40-year-old Cai Zhuhua has been struggling with life since her husband died in a mine tragedy that claimed 20 miners at the end of 2001. A 14-inch black-and-white TV and a rusty refregirator are the most expensive items in her family's shabby two-room apartment.

"Time has not dimmed the pain of losing my husband, and it never will," says Cai, who says that almost every morning at 5, her husband rose to leave on an early shift after caressing her and the children and bidding them goodbye before closing the door.

Cai is illiterate and now works as a part-time cleaner at the husband's Jianxin Coal Mine and says it has become increasingly hard to make ends meet as the kids get bigger.

"High costs for education have hit us hard," says Cai, whose face shows anxiety and distress.

With a total income of less than 700 yuan (US$87) per month, Cai had to make her eldest daughter drop out of high school last year to earn money for her younger sister and brother. The daughter has been persuaded by friends to go to work in Mianyang of Sichuan Province in Southwest China but has not been able to find a job there.

"My sister's lesson has shown us how difficult it is to find a job and I should be well prepared," says Cai's second daughter Li Ying, 17, who has been burning the midnight oil to prepare for the coming college entrance examinations.

Still sharing a room with her 16-year-old brother Li Hong, she is confident that she will pass the examination next month and hopes to study journalism at a university.

"My dad didn't live a single day of a happy life but I will try hard to earn a happy life for my mother," said Li Ying. "But the education fees are a headache for us."

Small community

Cai is not alone. Sorrow and distress are written on the faces of three other mining widows who live in the same row of apartments. All of their husbands perished in the same disaster.

After the accident, the families received between 25,000 and 35,000 yuan (US$3,000 to US$4,200) in compensation and the Jianxin Coal Mine has offered monthly living allowances for the families.

"We have used the sums up and life ahead will be tough," says 35-year-old Wang Meiying, whose husband died in the coal mine gas explosion when the couple's daughter was just 40 days old. A 12-year-old son is in primary school.

Living next door to Cai, Wang also works as part-time cleaner to supplement the meagre subsidiary of about 200 yuan (US$25) per month offered by the mine.

After her children leave to attend school each day, she always holds a portrait of her husband, and buries her sorrows in tears.

"It's the most devastating thing that can ever happen to a couple. It's been more than three years, but the hurt is still there like it was yesterday," says Wang, fighting back her emotions.

Sometimes, she stands on a hillside near her apartment, overlooking the road that leads to the mine and expects her husband will return. "There's nothing but sadness down there."

She says she would not let her husband be a miner if he had his life to live over again.

"As for my children, I want them to shake off poverty and the fate of being miners," says Wang. "But it's really hard."

Liu's mine is one of four under Fengcheng Coal Mining Bureau. With 10,000 workers and staff members, the bureau produces more than one tenth of the province's total coal production.

And statistics indicate that since 1949, a total of 400 miners of the bureau have perished in underground explosions, fires or floods.

No statistics are available as to how many miners have died in accidents during previous decades in Jiangxi.

But each day, an average of nearly 17 miners will die nationwide to satisfy 70 per cent of China's energy needs.

"Some accidents cannot be avoided because current technology cannot help us fully understand the complicated underground situation," said Yi Guangjing, president of the Jiangxi Provincial Coal Mining Group.

He added that most mines in his province mix coal, gas and oil. "The situation is prone to accidents."

During his career, he has shed endless tears and been blamed several times because of deaths or accidents. "I'm trying hard to make fewer families fall into poverty in accidents, but it is hard."

Source: China Daily