After the tragedy at the Lakshmi mine, Mittal is expelled from Kazakhstan

Over the past year, his enterprises have experienced the fifth emergency with the death of people.

President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared October 29 a day of mourning for the miners who died at the Kostenko mine, owned by ArcelorMittal Temirtau JSC. There was an explosion there on Saturday night. The result of this tragedy could be the expulsion of Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal from Kazakhstan. Tokayev instructed the government to stop investment cooperation with ArcelorMittal Temirtau.

According to the latest data, the bodies of 33 victims were discovered on Saturday. By Sunday, 13 people were still underground. A total of 252 miners were underground at the time of the explosion. As Gennady Silinsky, first deputy director of the Karaganda branch of the Republican Central Headquarters of Professional Paramilitary Emergency Rescue Services LLP, said, the blast wave was 2 km. President Tokayev personally came to the scene of the emergency in the Karaganda region. And he promised that the mine owners would be held accountable for the tragedy. The fact is that over the past year this is already the fifth tragedy at ArcelorMittal Temirtau facilities. And all of them were fatal.

As Tokayev stated during a meeting with relatives of the miners: “This company turned out to be the worst in our history in terms of cooperation with the Government and the enterprise. Now we need to think about taking action on the enterprise itself. You know Vadim Borisovich Basin. He once worked for ArcelorMittal and was deputy akim of the region. I instruct him to return and head this enterprise, take control. The current management of the enterprise is not succeeding.”

The Kazakh media recalled that before the latest tragedy, there had already been four tragedies at Mitall enterprises over the past year. November 3, 2022 at the mine named after. Lenin, five miners were killed as a result of a methane release. On December 8, 2022, a gas worker died at the coke-chemical production of the AMT metallurgical plant. On January 5, in the chemical recovery unit of sheet rolling shop No. 2, owned by ArcelorMittal Temirtau, an employee of a contracting organization died from electric shock. On August 17, a fire at the Kazakhstanskaya mine killed 5 people. In general, over the 28 years that ArcelorMittal Temirtau has owned coal and metallurgical facilities in Kazakhstan, more than 140 people have died.

However, as Kazakh political scientists note, a change of owner is unlikely to significantly improve the situation at the mine. The fact is that the National Scientific and Technical Center for Industrial Safety (the former Karaganda branch of the Eastern Research Institute for Safety in the Mining Industry) was liquidated by the government in 2017. And the Industrial Safety Committee of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Labor and Social Protection Committee of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population, apparently, cannot cope with the problems. Because emergencies at Kazakh enterprises occur regularly.