The Turkish nation remains stunned a day after a fire in a coalmine in western Turkey's famous Soma township took away more than 270 lives.
Turks are used to disasters of all kinds and have suffered for decades because of earthquakes and many other natural events.
But we have seldom lived through such manmade disasters with such huge human losses. Turkey is third in the world in the list of countries that have suffered mining accidents. The government brought stringent safety rules in 2012, yet the application of some of them was delayed due to practicalities. Despite this, we would have expected lesser such accidents and with minimal fatalities. But we see that this is not the case.
We have listened to experts, industry officials, government people and state authorities throughout the day and have come to the conclusion that while strict rules have been introduced some of them have not been applied, and those that have been applied have not been effective because the mine owners have used shortcuts to cut down costs, and some officials have turned a blind eye to all this.
The mine fire was the result of an explosion at the electricity transformer inside the mine. It sparked a fire just as the shifts were changing. Thus, the casualties increased.
A private company runs the mine, and its security measures were inspected two months ago.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan went to pains to legislate and enforce very strict safety codes in dangerous workplaces like the mines. It is clear that these measures were not enough, and actually, some of them were defective. It is also clear that the authorities and the trade unions that are supposed to safeguard the rights and security of the workers did not do their jobs properly. The authorities should have been more insistent on following the rules and making sure the safety procedures were in place, while the trade unions should have been pestering the employers about mine security and safety. But of course the trade unions were busy trying to march to Taksim Square on May 1 and debate the issue for days instead of putting more attention to the plight of the mines and their miner comrades.
It is clear that the sub-contracting system in which mines are handed over to the private sector that runs them for profit by means of illegal cost cutting remains a problem.
All these deaths, all these sufferings and tears should not be in vein. This should be a wakeup call for Turkey to put its house in order with proper and more stringent mining safety measures and mines inspected and monitored frequently. We should not let the government, the opposition, the trade unions and the employers never ever forget Soma.
Our only consolation is that we have a proper government that will attend to the families of the victims and will tend to their needs not only today but also in the future. Our other consolation is that the disaster united our people in grief, and our mosques on Tuesday were full of people praying for the disaster victims and the rescue of trapped miners.
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