“You'll Be Fired if You Refuse” - Human Rights Watch

They have a safety officer in place, but the final say is with the Chinese. It
should be with the safety officer, but it’s not. He has no authority in the
Chinese mines to say that work can’t go ahead, that it’s too unsafe. It’s not
like that elsewhere…. Other companies know the labor laws here; they may
infringe them from time to time, but nothing like the Chinese. The Chinese
don’t know how to observe safety laws. They are the worst in accidents.
Sometimes we don’t even receive information about accidents there unless
there’s a fatality, as they’ll cover it up. 152
A Zambian safety officer at NFCA, who previously worked in the same capacity in another
mining company, described his difficulties to Human Rights Watch:
Our department supervises the working environment. Our job is to make
sure that safety codes are complied with, but if we go to check these things,
we meet resistance. Most of our work takes place underground, seeing if
there are safety problems. We report to the supervisor when there are bad
conditions, when there are places where people shouldn’t work, but the
Chinese supervisor doesn’t listen. He doesn’t care…. In other mines, it’s left
in the hands of the safety officers, the supervisor of the safety officers. But
here at NFCA, there are supervisors outside the safety office that we must
report to, the Chinese. And they have the ultimate say, not us. There are so
many times that I advise the work to be halted until the conditions are
made safe, or that I advise them to stop using certain equipment because
it’s broken and needs repair, but they don’t listen. They rarely listen. They
care about getting more [copper] out, whatever the cost.
For example, there was a vehicle underground that was broken. It had
broken headlights. They didn’t work. We said stop using this car
underground, that’s dangerous. They refused for months, they kept using it.
We had to involve the mine police to get it out from underground, to get the
Chinese to stop using it. Even now, they use it on the surface. 153
The same safety officer also described his department’s lack of resources, stating that it
was only in October 2010 that it received a vehicle to more easily move around the plant
that stretches several kilometers. He likewise noted that it was more than five years after
152 Human Rights Watch interview with NUMAW official, Kitwe, July 12, 2011.
153 Human Rights Watch interview with NFCA safety officer, Chambishi, November 11, 2010.
51 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | NOVEMBER 2011