Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang has called on local governments to attach higher importance to production safety and improve workplace safety management.

More investment should be put into the development of technologies, and production safety should be strengthened through scientific and technological progress, Zhang said during his inspection tour in Anhui Province on Monday and Tuesday.

He urged enterprises to provide more production safety trainings to their workers and asked enterprise managers to enhance safety awareness.

Zhang called for greater efforts to enhance work safety supervision and management in coal mines. Production safety regulations should be firmly abided by and the life of coal miners must be considered the priority, he said.

He also demanded that local authorities intensify safety inspection ahead of the Spring Festival to prevent traffic accidents, firework and fire accidents as well as stampedes that might lead to mass injuries or deaths.

(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2009)