Chapter 67 Difficult vortex achieves officialdom "Bermuda"

Time to enter 2005. This year, a special keyword appeared in various local government documents: "administrative accountability".Some people called 2005 the "Year of Accountability" in Shanxi. I remember that from this year onwards, mine accidents occurred frequently in the coal-producing areas of Shanxi. Affected by this, many local officials were "questioned" and fell to the ground one after another.It is understood that in the past few years, nearly a hundred local officials in Shanxi have been "questioned" and fell to the ground in the storm of accountability due to coal mine safety issues.As a result, the rumors that "it's hard to be an official" arose.

A piece of black coal buried deep in the ground actually determines the official career and career of coal officials on the ground. This seems to be the basic "signature feature" of Shanxi's coal government, economy and society. A civil servant of the Datong Municipal Government in Shanxi said: "Being an official in Shanxi is already a high-risk industry. If you fail, you will be jailed. The days of being a Taiping official are gone forever." After a closer look, the source of the storm of accountability that has affected officials' careers is, for Shanxi people, an "ordinary event" that has long been commonplace in the coal production process—a mine accident.

Here we might as well take Linfen, the “big coal city” as an example. Linfen's traditional pillar industries are coal, coke, and iron. When the mining industry was in chaos, the local large-scale mining left many hidden dangers, so the "probability" of accidents was higher than other places.Therefore, relatively speaking, the "risk factor" of being an official here is greater. At this point, facing the reality that local officials were "questioned" and fell to the ground due to safety accidents, people began to think more geographically: Is coal production and safety accidents really a pair of "twin brothers" that cannot be separated?

Some people say that Shanxi needs to ensure the security of the national energy strategy and meet the growing energy demand of developed regions. In addition, Shanxi itself relies too much on coal for its own development. Therefore, it is necessary to mine coal in Shanxi.However, the current level of productivity in our country determines that accidents cannot be fundamentally eliminated, so to some extent, this is indeed a pair of realistic contradictions. "From the surface of things, it seems that some leaders have bad luck, but it should be said that some leaders' dereliction of duty led to this tragic ending." An expert from the Shanxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences analyzed.

This expert hit the nail on the head.From the analysis of the causes of previous coal mine accidents, the "results" of many accidents such as "absence of management", "improper measures", and "weak awareness" all point to the "cause" of "man-made". So far, we can identify a rule: the frequent occurrence of mine disasters, local officials cannot absolve themselves of the blame.