Development Strategy to Prevent Accidents in Indonesian Surface Coal Mines

Abstract

The coal mining industry plays an important role contributing to the national economy and development in Indonesia, otherwise the mine accidents are become a big issues or problems. This paper describes the concepts behind the return on prevention analysis and workers descriptive perceptions of the occupational health and safety in relation to improve safety performances or accidents prevention. The proactive actions plan related to accidents prevention is as an essential step in the risk management processes. The return on prevention or cost benefit analysis gives the efficiency of the money and resources invested to the mining industry, in relation to the occupational health and safety issues. The analytical descriptive assessments is perform as a method used in this paper, through delivering of the questionnaire, interview, and observation processes. The seven elements are as a basic involved such as safety training, personal protective equipment, preventive medical check-up, employment injury insurance, improvement existing technology, signalization, and organization. The advantages of using these analyses are showing the important in invest of money and workers perception effectiveness in relating to the accidents prevention or improve safety performances. The analytical tools as a mention before, the effectiveness of intervention to the environment working conditions and workers mindsets. The investment of money into the occupational health and safety programs for employees, in general will trigger the work performances to be better, and then the occupational health and safety in a strong position to achive goals. Case study of this paper takes into the representative of four surface coal mining companies with total sampling approximately 1,600 respondents with category of small, medium, and big scale of mining enterprises. The study results show that invest of money and employees perceptions are most important processes in preventing accidents and will give a good image for mining businesses.