Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday urged companies to keep in mind their responsibilities and to enhance safe production, noting that top priority must be given to people's safety and health.

Xi gave the instructions as the resumption of work and production is underway amid the coronavirus outbreak. He also called for strengthening monitoring and law enforcement of production safety.

Xi said that over the year 2019, China's workplace safety has improved overall as the total number of accidents has been declining, in all three categories of minor, medium and major accidents. However, he said there is still much work that needs to be done in terms of reducing potential risks.

The Chinese president underlined that life comes before anything else. Thus, Party committees, governments and leading officials at all levels should prioritize workplace safety and be well aware of the idea of safe development.

Noting that the country is at a crucial moment of advancing epidemic prevention together with the resumption of production, Xi said that officials must not compromise safety issues for the sake of developments and formalism and bureaucracy must be avoided.

He also urged officials to focus on the main characteristics of as well as problems exposed in safety-related accidents, and then rest responsibility on all related parties while grasping on rectification in order to improve workplace safety.

The president underscored the importance of establishing a sound safety production responsibility and management system, calling on governments and leading officials at all levels to identify potential dangers, enhance supervision and safeguard public life and property security with concrete actions.

By following all of these, the prevention of risks thus can be maximized and safety-related accidents, especially major ones, can be eradicated from the root, noted Xi.

Premier Li Keqiang also made instructions on workplace safety. He said China should take a systematic approach and implement targeted measures to ensure effective safety control in key areas such as hazardous chemicals, mines, transportation, industrial parks, urban construction and hazardous waste.

The instructions were delivered at a national teleconference on workplace safety in Beijing Friday. At the conference, officials made arrangements for safety precautions in resuming work and production and for carrying out the three-year action plan on improving national workplace safety.