Former New Zealand Department of Labour mines inspector Kevin Poynter took the stand at the Royal Commission inquiry into the Pike River mine disaster for the second time yesterday.

The inquiry heard that Poynter was never informed about serious violations at the mine.

Thus far the inquiry has revealed flaws in the DoL’s handling of the country’s mine inspectors, who were severely under-resourced in the lead-up to last year’s explosion which killed 29 men.

Under questioning on Wednesday, Poynter, who was a Pike River mine inspector from 2008 to June 2011, revealed that he was never aware of contraband items being identified at the mine in June 2009.

Poynter was presented with a safety alert from lawyer James Wilding which stated: “Recent incidents involving contraband found underground have included cigarette butts found in the tunnel, aluminum soft drink lids, a vehicle with no scrubber tank was taken into the tunnel and most recently a cigarette lighter was found in the back of a drift runner.”

The alert went on to say: “As a result of this latest breach of the mine manager’s rules, all under-managers are now being instructed to conduct weekly random searches of personnel for contraband items before going underground.”

When Poynter was asked if this safety breach had been drawn to his attention he admitted that it had not, but if he had known about it he would have taken further actions than what was required.

“I'd require the mine to ensure that they carry out a retraining programme, like a re-induction around this particular issue and that there would be random daily, random checks every day, every shift, so people were searched before they went underground,” Poynter said.

Poynter, who visited Pike River seven times in two and a half years, also told the commission that during his time as inspector he was never made aware of an incident at the mine in which a lot of methane was picked up underground in close proximity to machines.

This was despite a coal shift electrical report dated October 28, 2010 recording the methane only weeks before the explosion.

“Did you become aware during your visit of 2 November … that there were reports of a lot of CH4 [methane] around machinery?” Wilding said.

“No, I did not become aware of that,” Poynter said.

In another piece of damning evidence, Poynter confirmed that he was never informed of methane spikes coming from the top of the mine’s ventilation shaft during October 2010.

Evidence presented from Wilding stated that at times during that month methane levels ranged from above 1.25% to just below 2.5%.

Poynter said this was an urgent matter and he would have investigated it straight away if he was alerted to the incident.

“I would argue that they are notifiable events in that they’re uncontrolled gas incidents … these spikes are not occurring because the gas incidents underground are being controlled,” he said.

During the course of the day Poynter was told that compressed air from a fan was being directed on to methane sensors so it would not give the correct gas readings.

No health and safety inspectors were notified of this safety breach.

Poynter said he was given a copy of a log book detailing incidents at Pike River but he was too busy to look at them.

“There were several occasions where I was asked to do non-mining work in non-mining workplaces such as first response to an accident that occurred on a farm, first response to an incident in a factory and a fish-filleting icebox,” Poynter said.

“So in addition we were really busy and we just didn’t have the time to be able to sit down and go through these documents.

"We were two inspectors, we were dysfunctional in that we reported to separate managers, and we had one adviser with no coal background.”

During his evidence, Poynter took the time out to describe his personal thoughts towards the issues that were being raised throughout the day, reminding the inquiry that he was just “one person”

“It’s really difficult for me as one individual to be able to be responsible for the follow-up of every action that is sitting in front of us,” he said.

“I can't do the job or be expected to do a job at a mine, when it’s got a whole raft of management structure. They’ve got ventilation engineers, they’ve got

geotech, they’ve got designers, they’ve got consultants – and I'm there on my own, trying to do the whole lot and it’s really a difficult job.

“We can't be everything, sorry.”