Families picket road to prevent the sealing of New Zealand’s Pike River mine
This morning, family members of some of the 29 workers killed in the Pike River mine disaster, as well as their supporters, held a protest blocking the road to the mine site on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island.
Families and supporters picket on the road to Pike River mine (Photo by Kath Monk)
The action is part of the fight by 22 of the 29 families to stop the Labour Party-Greens government from permanently sealing the mine and preventing the forensic examination of evidence about what caused the November 2010 explosions.
New Zealand government preparing to seal Pike River mine
The New Zealand Labour Party government’s Pike River Recovery Agency (PRRA) is aiming to install the first of two seals in the underground coal mine this week, having already removed technical equipment. Work on the temporary seal 170 metres inside the drift, or entry tunnel, was to have started last week, but was delayed by bad weather.
Just over two years ago, on May 21, 2019, workers employed by the PRRA re-entered the mine to determine the causes of the November 2010 explosions which killed 29 workers. Labour and its allies, the Greens and NZ First Party, had promised in the 2017 election to conduct the underground investigation and to try to recover bodies from the mine.
Stop the New Zealand government’s plan to seal Pike River mine!
The Labour Party-led government is racing to shut down the underground investigation of Pike River coal mine. It aims to prevent the recovery of evidence that could lead to prosecutions of those responsible for the disaster which killed 29 workers in November 2010.
The Pike River Recovery Agency (PRRA), which has only explored the mine’s drift or entry tunnel, intends to pull workers and equipment out and start sealing the mine this week.
Nobody from Pike River Coal Ltd. has been prosecuted for the company’s egregious violations of workplace safety legislation, including grossly inadequate ventilation, which allowed methane gas to reach explosive levels. A 2012 royal commission of inquiry established that the company placed production ahead of workers’ safety and ignored numerous warnings of a catastrophe.
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