Six killed, dozens injured in work accidents in Karaj and Pakdasht
On Monday, July 1, six workers were killed and dozens injured in several work accidents in Karaj and Pakdasht.
According to IRNA, the CEO of the Pakdasht Fire Department announced that five workers at a cardboard manufacturing workshop in the village of Mahmoudabad lost their lives due to a "gas leak from a cardboard fermentation tank."
Qasem Khajeh Hosseini has said that the cause of the incident is being investigated.
Meanwhile, according to the Iranian Broadcasting Agency, the owner of the workshop, along with his son and nephew, an Iranian worker, and an Afghan worker were among the dead.
The city of Pakdasht is located 20 kilometers southeast of Tehran.
Also on Monday, one person was killed and at least 39 people were injured in a fire at the Rang Kamal factory on the Karaj-Tehran highway.
According to the Iranian State Broadcasting Agency, Mojtaba Khalidi, spokesman for the country's emergency services, said that 35 of the injured were treated on an outpatient basis and four were transferred to the hospital.
Jalal Maleki, a spokesman for the Tehran Fire Department, also said that the fire was 2,000 meters wide and was brought under control at 5:00 p.m. According to Mr. Maleki, 12 cars were burned inside the factory in the incident.
The cause of the fire has not yet been announced.
On Monday morning, the temporary market in Golshahr, Karaj, also caught fire, and the fire lasted for two hours.
According to the released videos, all the stalls in the market were burned. The ILNA news agency had said that two people were injured in the incident. There were no casualties in the fire.
Meanwhile, Karaj Prosecutor Haji Reza Shakerami said that the cause of the fire is under investigation and that "unauthorized electrical wiring" was likely the cause.
According to this report, about 700 people were employed in this market, which was launched late last year as part of a project called "Organizing Street Vendors."
According to statistics from the Iranian Ministry of Labor, 10,513 workplace accidents occurred last year, injuring 10,697 people. 843 people were killed in these accidents.
According to these statistics, the construction sector, with 4058 accidents, and the industrial sector, with 3659, had the most work-related accidents.
In 2016, 812 people lost their lives in work-related accidents. A year earlier, the head of the country's Construction Workers Association had said that Iran was the "record holder" for work-related accidents in the world.
Iranian officials say that “carelessness” is the main cause of work-related accidents in Iran, and that is why most accidents occur. On the other hand, a number of workers’ rights activists and activists say that “the government’s policies and its sub-systems do not protect the workforce,” and for a group of employers, “increasing profits is more important than the lives of workers.”
Source: Radio Farda
