How were the conditions at Amasra mine?

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Forty-one workers were killed in a coal mine explosion on October 14 in Amasra, Bartın, in Northern Türkiye.

In an interview with bianet, Seyhan Bilgin, a retired mine worker and head of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) district organization in Amasra, gave insight into the working conditions of the mine where the explosion occurred.

Bilgin explained that the mine is one of the safest ones in Amasra, with various amounts of technical equipment for security. Therefore, the fault which caused the explosion had to be a human error.

What could contribute to that is that lately, people working at the mine are unqualified. According to Bilgin, workers used to receive training at the university in Zonguldak. Sending people to a mine with only six days plus a few hours is "sending people to death," he said.

Bilgin further described that the reasons we see these accidents are due to a lack of workers and the compulsion of production. Furthermore, he noted that if necessary precautions were taken and those responsible were punished in the accident in Kozlu, Soma this would not have happened.

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Türkiye's deadly coal history

The second biggest coal mine disaster happened in 1992, in Kozlu, located in the province of Zonguldak. 263 were killed in a gas explosion.

In 2014, Türkiye's deadliest mine disaster occurred in Soma, Manisa, where 301 people lost their lives in an explosion caused by an underground fire.

In a 2010 incident in Zonguldak, 28 miners died. During a visit to the city, President Reep Tayyip Erdoğan had referred to the incident ''the fate of this profession'," which he repeated after the Bartın explosion.

However, according to Emin Koramaz, head of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, mining incidents in Türkiye have become routine.

Statistics of SGK show that in 2021 every day 47 accidents occurred and 114 workers died, the highest death rate in the European mining industry. (EMK/WM/VK)