A high number of workplace accidents take place in Iran every year, most of them caused by the lack of professional training programs as well as proper workplace monitoring.
According to ISNA, construction sector registers 50 percent of workplace accidents, while 95 percent of these accidents happen due to lack of training programs.
The number of workplace accidents in Iran is too high, the minister of labor, cooperatives and social welfare Ali Rabeie complains, while acknowledging that a raft of measures should be taken by the government to help standardize working conditions across the country.
“Workers (human factor) are to blame for 85 percent of workplace accidents, while in 52 percent of the cases, there is a lack of workplace supervisory management,” Mohammad Esabati, the director general of the inspection office at the labor ministry told ISNA on Monday.
Hormozgan province ranks first in the number of occupational accidents in Iran with 87 percent, Esabati said.
Safety Directive
The ministry of labor published “The Safety Guide For Contractors” in 2009. The mandate has been implemented in some provinces since then. According to this directive, all the contractors should get ‘the safety qualification certificate’ before starting to hire workers.
The labor ministry, labor inspection office, and committee for labor safety including health and safety executives (HSE) are working together to implement the safety guide in all provinces.
Officials believe that implementation of this directive will guarantee workers’ safety and health.
The inspection office of the ministry of labor has recently announced 52 operational programs to avoid occupational accidents aimed at protecting the workforce.
Due to lack of an appropriate system for registration and reporting, there is no accurate information about occupational accidents in Iran and the available data highly relies on the reports released by coroner’s office.
However, the inspection office announced that in the last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2014), some 13,000 occupational accidents had taken place in the country. The same report put the number of deaths from work accidents at 800, as reported by ISNA.
When making a personal injury claim for compensation after an accident at work, employers usually find trouble with the employees. The coroner and occupational medicine specialists then determine the level of injury in cooperation with inspectors from the ministries of labor and health.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 337 million accidents happen on the job each year, resulting, together with occupational diseases, in more than 2.3 million deaths annually.
