Four county officials were today sacked in China for their role in the collapse of a gypsum mine that left one miner dead and 17 others trapped in the eastern Shandong Province.
Party chief of Pingyi County, the county head and two deputy heads were sacked for "a series of work safety incidents" in the county, the county government said at a conference this afternoon.
The mine accident occurred on Friday when 29 people were working underground. While one was declared dead, four others managed to escape and another seven have been rescued so far.
The owner of the mine drowned himself by jumping into a well when working with the rescue team early Sunday morning, fearing reprisals as the government ordered suspension of the mine's operations.
The cause of the accident is under investigation.
Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral that is widely used in construction.
China, which has a poor record in terms of the number of deaths caused by lack of industrial safety standards, insists the number of fatalities is declining but some rights groups argue that the actual figures are higher than what the official data claims.
Anger over lax safety standards is growing after scores of deaths this year, including this month's landslide in the commercial hub of Shenzhen and a chemical blast in the industrial city of Tianjin in August.
