ANKARA
After a 37-day marathon of debate, the Turkish parliament's planning and budget commission has approved an omnibus bill that includes improvements in miners' rights.
The 150-article bill came to the parliament's agenda after a coal mine disaster in May killed 301 miners in western Turkey.
According to the bill, the retirement age for mine workers will be reduced to 50 from 55 and their working hours will be lowered to 6 hours from 8 hours a day.
The bill also regulates the weekly working hours of miners, which will be 36 hours at maximum.
Other proposals in the bill include some regulations on the rights of the relatives of the miners who died in the disaster in May.
A miner's wife or one of his children, or, if a miner does not have any children or wife, one of his brothers or sisters will be employed in government offices.
The bill will be debated in the general assembly before the parliament enters summer recess on July 25.
The disaster in the town of Soma in Manisa province surpassed the death toll of a 1992 firedamp explosion in the mining town of Zonguldak on Turkey's Black Sea coast, in which 263 miners died.
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