Shanxi's Department of Emergency Management has issued a special notice tightening limits on the number of workers allowed underground per shift at coal mines across the province, along with stricter rules for special-case staffing increases.

The notice, which follows national and provincial regulations on mine entry limits, requires mining companies to strictly enforce their work safety responsibilities and prohibits disguised overstaffing.

Additional staffing is now permitted only under four special circumstances, including disaster control and process support, and must be tied to specific positions, construction procedures and actual workloads.

All additional workers must be included in the mine's total per-shift headcount and positioning statistics for excavation areas.

The notice also defines clear timing boundaries for staffing increases. Pre-construction works completed ahead of excavation, such as pressure relief, gas drainage and support installation, do not qualify for special staffing increases.

Only essential operations conducted in parallel with excavation, gob-side entry retention, backfill mining and shield tunnelling may apply.

Mines must maintain stable operation of monitoring and attendance systems with authentic data uploads, and violations such as entering mines without cards, using substitute cards, holding multiple cards, tampering with data or nominally listing workers are subject to strict investigation.

Special staffing approvals are valid for one year and subject to dynamic changes and tiered management. Mining companies must routinely self-check whether staffing increase conditions still exist. Within seven working days of project suspension or termination, they must proactively reduce staffing numbers, restore standard limits and report to local regulators.

Extensions require on-site verification by municipal emergency management bureaus, while cases involving new development levels, new mining seams or new types of staffing expansion must be reported to the provincial emergency management department for on-site review.

Regulatory authorities at all levels are required to incorporate compliance with shift entry limits and special staffing rules into routine inspections and hidden danger investigations, intensify on-site verification, and strictly penalise enterprises found to be overstaffed or failing to meet review standards, with closed-loop rectification to reinforce the province's coal mine work safety foundation.