The July 30 blast in Sor Range, Quetta killed some 34 coal miners, all belonging to Shangla, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Although it was among the biggest number of casualties in recent times, the incident is symptomatic of the failure to preserve safety standards in the mines across the country. Poverty drives Shangla’s youth to Balochistan’s coal mines, where improper methods like blasting mines to obtain more coal and absence of proper safety measures has led to generations of deaths of coal miners. The Balochistan government has initiated an inquiry into the incident, with labor leaders demanding that coal miners be included in the investigation.
