Three years ago, on April 1, 2022, in the "Soko" mine near Sokobanja eight miners died. No one was responsible for their death.
According to the then Minister of Mining and Energy, Zorana Mihajlović, the cause worker's death is methane poisoning.
Six miners from Aleksinac, one from Vranje and one from Sokobanja died in the accident.
18 miners suffered minor and serious injuries.
Student letter to the miners of Serbia
On Tuesday (April 1), students in the blockade of Novi Sad faculties sent an open letter to the miners of Serbia. They stated that the fact that no one was held accountable for the death of the miner is only a reminder that we live in a corrupt system, against which everyone must fight.
"The system has forgotten them, but we have not. We believe that such an attitude towards the craft, which has given so much to this country, is unacceptable. We demand justice for every victim of systemic corruption, for everyone whom the state has forgotten," the students said in the letter.
What did the inspection find?
A few hours after the accident, on April 2022, XNUMX, the Soko mine was visited by the only mining inspector in the country at that time - Zorica Vukadinović.
She found that Soko does not have permission to carry out mining works in that part of the Mine.
It's not just any document - without it, the mine wouldn't be able to work at all. The approval states where and how the coal will be mined, what the tunnels will be like, what kind of ventilation and the like. Practically, working without approval is like building without a building permit.
Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) he wrote earlier that the mining inspection of the Ministry of Mining and Energy knew years before the accident that Soko did not have this approval and ordered the Mine to obtain it.
In November 2016, the then mining inspector Milanko Savić gave Rudnik six months to obtain approval. As this did not happen, the inspector ordered the same thing again in 2017, but nothing changed even then.
Soko continued to work without a permit until the accident, although the inspection could have banned him from working.
Ventilation off
Another reason given was the fact that the ventilation in Rudnik stopped, although it was not supposed to.
Immediately before the accident, the electricity went out in Rudnik. It's no accident. In the area where the miners were digging, methane was more than the allowed 1,5 percent. In that situation, the usual procedure is to turn off the electricity because methane is a highly flammable gas and can lead to an explosion.
Along with the electricity, the ventilation was also turned off - which should not have happened, according to the experts whom CINS spoke to earlier. Ventilation is important in a mine because it brings fresh air from the surface and can also blow methane out of the pit.
Miner Srđan Colarić, who worked in the Soko mine for 17 years, tells CINS that the procedure is such that the miners retreat to an area with fresh air when methane exceeds the limit of 1,5 percent. He explains that the dispatcher is the one pulling the miners.
However, this was not the case on April 1 when the accident occurred.
From the recordings of the conversations that were recorded on the night of the accident, the dispatcher can be heard informing the miners on several occasions that the methane is elevated. At one point he says the methane is five percent, but doesn't tell them to back off.
