The Department of Labor has awarded nearly $1 million in grants to support the development and delivery of education and training in 10 organizations to help identify, avoid and prevent unsafe working conditions in and around the country’s mines.
Supported by the Brookwood-Sago Mine Safety Grant Program, grantees will create training materials, promote and facilitate mine safety training or education programs and evaluate their effectiveness.
The Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA) says the awards align with the department’s focus on targeting programs and materials to small mines and the miners who work there. The MSHA seeks to educate miners and industry employers about new federal standards and high-risk activities or hazards.
“The Mine Safety and Health Administration exists to protect the safety and health of the country’s miners,” said Chris Williamson, MSHA Assistant Secretary. “The Brookwood and Sago mine tragedies are stark reminders of the risks miners face on the job. The grants we make today will support the critically important training and education that people working in our mines need and deserve.
Grant recipients
This year’s Brookwood-Sago grant recipients include:
• The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, which received $158,962 to develop training materials for a three-hour, instructor-led course to educate new, inexperienced surface mine operators on site hazards of work.
• The Arizona Board of Trustees at the University of Arizona in Tucson received $157,936 for comprehensive training, assessment, and compliance reporting tools related to a project titled: “SMARTer Training: A Data-Driven, Collaborative Toolkit to Improve Training and Reporting Outcomes for Contractors and Small Mine Operators.”
• Hutchinson Community College in Kansas received $100,300 for hazard recognition training equipment, including virtual reality simulation and traditional equipment to train miners in Kansas and Nebraska.
• Kentucky’s Southeast Community and Technical College received $82,438 to develop, market, deliver and evaluate Parts 46 and 48 of the Transportation and Safety of Mobile Coal and Metal/Non-Metallic Equipment Training.
• The United Mine Workers of America Career Centers in Pennsylvania received $55,046 to develop a bilingual miners’ statutory rights awareness training program to supplement existing miners’ statutory rights training that can be used to educate new miners or reinforce experienced miners’ understanding of their legal rights under U.S. laws and regulations, as well as appropriate responses if they encounter unsafe or unhealthy working conditions.
• The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology received $120,000 to develop virtual reality training, interactive training materials and a new miner training program focused on preventing unsafe conditions in mines.
• Western Dakota Technical College in Rapid City, South Dakota, received $109,945 for training focused on power transmission and mobile equipment safety, as well as mine emergency prevention and preparedness .
• The University of Texas at Arlington received $50,000 for training materials focused on identifying fall hazards and best practices for reducing workplace injuries and fatalities among miners. The grant is also directed towards the development of training on the prevention of falls among minors.
• The Virginia Department of Energy at Big Stone Gap received $50,000 to enhance virtual reality training, simulating conditions at mine sites to help identify, avoid and prevent unsafe working conditions and avoid unsafe acts, in and around mines, which can cause accidents in the workplace.
• West Virginia Research Corp. in Morgantown received $100,657 to provide emergency prevention and preparedness training to coal miners and coal mine operators in mine rescue and dry chemical firefighting.
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