China aims to reduce deaths from coal mine accidents by 3.5 percent and deaths from traffic accidents by 3 percent from levels of the previous year in 2006, said China's leading work safety official.

"The quotas have been broken down and handed down to all provinces, municipalities directly under the central government and autonomous regions," said Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety.

Li, who is also a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) , said two other quotas will also be broken down and handed down to regional governments after winning approval at the ongoing annual session of the NPC: A drop of 35 percent of deaths from workplace accidents for the generation of 100 million yuan (about 12.5 million U.S. dollars) of GDP; and a decline of 25 percent of deaths from workplace accidents in every 100,000 employees of industry, mining, commerce and trade businesses.

Li said fulfillment of these quotas will be taken into account in evaluating work performance of regional governments.

He expressed confidence that the quotas can be fulfilled if various regions adopt effective measures.

He called for strengthening safety infrastructure of various coal mines, especially state-owned coal mines, focusing on properly handling gas, rectifying irregular practices and closing unsafe mines.

Efforts should also be made to prevent flooding and coal dust explosion, said Li.

China reported 3,341 coal mine accidents in 2005, which killed 5,938 people. The number of deaths from coal mines last year dropped slightly from the previous year.

China reported 450,000 road accidents last year, which killed 98,738 and injured 470,000 people and caused 1.88 billion yuan ( 235 million U.S. dollars) of direct property losses.

"We will continue to improve production safety. Ensuring production safety is a huge responsibility. We must not compromise production safety for the sake of economic development," Premier Wen Jiabao said in his government work report delivered to the annual NPC session.

Wen said measures will be taken to address both symptoms and root causes of safety problems, including implementing responsibility system for production safety at every level.

Source: Xinhua