Production safety standards are still not up to the mark despite a drop in the number of workplace accidents and deaths in the first 11 months of this year, China's top safety watchdog said yesterday.

State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) said about 457,000 accidents were reported from January to November, a year-on-year decrease of 22.4 percent. The number of accident deaths too fell, too, to 88,923, a year-on-year drop of 14 percent.

Eighty-three serious accidents, in each of which 10 or more people were killed, claimed a total of 1,380 lives, SAWS Deputy Director Wang Xianzheng told a forum.