Jordan – a 30 year old worker at the electricity company, Badran Naimat, died after suffering in the hospital for more than two weeks, following a power switch with a high pressure burst. Naimat is the fifth victim of the company’s workers who died while doing their job.
This incident renewed the outrage among workers at the electricity company, who confirms the lack of health and safety conditions, despite the seriousness of their work, as the company emphasizes its commitment to safety conditions
The president of the General Trade Union of Workers in Electricity Ali Hadid said that the company failed in providing health and safety conditions for its workers
noting that the nature of this work is very dangerous, which means more injuries that lead to death or disabilities will happen more.
He added that “the company management do not provide workers with safety tools like flame resistance coats and helmets and other equipments that help the lives of workers”.
Hadid confirms that the union held many meeting with the company to come with agreements on a tender to provide these tools for the workers, but it has not yet been implemented, “we do not know why it is delayed.
Hadid demanded the to form a commission of inquiry to determine the cause of the explosion in Madaba, that killed Alenaimat, the father of four children, stressing the need to improve the working environment for workers.
The unionist Tayseer Ashran who works for the company expressed his anger at the continuation of what he described as disregard of workers life”, stressing that workers do not feel safe, because they know they are at risk at any moment.
Ashran pointed out that they asked the company many times to provide safe environment for workers but the company did not listen.
Ashran said that the company bring workers on temporary contracts so that they do not have to pay extras for them , and those untrained workers have no experience, and the company does not give them any courses, so they are like ticking time bombs that could explode at any moment, one of them died this year of electric shock.
Ashran pointed out that many workers have to work extra hours to improve their wages, and thus working up to 16 hours, sometimes 20 hours, which means that they reach to the point of exhaustion and lose their ability to work with caution, he also criticized the low salaries that force workers to find additional jobs. Director of Media in the Social Security Corporation Mosa Subaihi, said that the percentage of injuries in the workplace abound in the manufacturing sector, reaching 33% in 2015, indicating that the electricity, gas and water supply sector has seen 152 work injury over the past year.
Media consultant of the Electricity Company, Khaled al-Zubaidi, confirmed that the company is very committed to all occupational health and safety conditions, and considers this on the ladder of priorities, pointing out that every worker has the clothes, helmet and boots and equipments needed to protect them”.
Zubaidi said that what cause injuries to workers is feeling extra confident while working because they have a lot of experience in this area, and thus do not observe safety requirements.
He said: If we do not already provide tools and equipments for occupational health and safety, we will see injuries and deaths every day.
Social Security Corporation confirmed in previous statements, that the Social Security Act strengthened orientations to protect the workforce, by adding a legislative texts of occupational safety and health, obliges and encourages enterprises to pay attention to this area
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