On video: the scene of the fatal construction accident in the Carmel Castle (photo: Yoav Itiel)
About 600 people were injured in 2021 in work accidents, according to the data of the labor branch of the Ministry of Economy, and the ones who are supposed to fight this sick evil are safety inspectors.
However, several supervisors who spoke with Walla!
They claim that they do not receive basic conditions.
"There are no conditions. People are recruited to supervise work accidents and then they are not given the basic conditions to succeed in the job," said D., a work accident supervisor who asked to remain anonymous.
According to the official website of the labor branch, the role of the inspectors is to "supervise the various branches of the economy - industry, crafts, construction, agriculture and services - and check compliance with the requirements of the laws and regulations and their enforcement."
Also, the administration has an investigative unit that investigates work accidents.
But one of the problems is the lack of sufficient standards for supervisors, and the lack of significant powers for supervisors and work accident investigators.
Today there are only 70 inspectors in Israel, of which a tiny number of 60 inspectors are in the construction industry.
Only 70 inspectors work in Israel, of which 60 are in the construction industry (photo: Walla! system, Reuven Castro)
At the beginning of 2019, a ruling was issued in the High Court on a petition filed by the Ko LaOved organization to protect the rights of workers. In the petition, the organization asked the police and the labor branch to establish a national police unit to investigate work accidents in the construction industry, to expand criminal investigations and to increase the number of standards in the units.
The petition became unnecessary after the Ministry of Finance and the branch Labor decided to establish and budget for a dedicated national unit to investigate work accidents in the police. It was also decided to assign additional standards, so that 60 labor inspector standards were added, in addition to the 27 existing standards, and it was even decided to upgrade their salary.
However, agreements separately and reality separately.
The source of the cave in details said to Wala!
Because although "standards have been approved, but no one knows what's going on with it, there is no recruitment. Ten standards have been approved for researchers, which is also nothing. More than that, our job is to go around the field to check what's going on, to do surprise inspections. Car maintenance is something that was just before They decided to give us a month. For three years, inspectors and investigators drove without car maintenance, when the price of gas is in the sky, you can understand for yourself what the quality of supervision and control was."
More in Walla!
Transparent even in their deaths: Yelena and her son Serge were buried, none of the welfare officials bothered to come to the funeral
To the full article
"Standards have been approved, but no one knows what's going on with it."
Work accident at a construction site in Ra'anana (Photo: MDA, Summer Mansour)
According to the same source, "Only now have some of our conditions improved. We have a shortage of vehicles and this affects the number of visits. An inspector who does not receive vehicle maintenance can reach the amount of 84 visits per year, if he has a vehicle maintenance he can reach an average of 160 visits. If an inspector receives An attached vehicle, as the Ministry of Finance signed with the previous CEO, he will be able to make 264 visits.
That's a lot of money on his account."
Inspector D, who asked to remain anonymous, told Walla! that "there are 70 thousand construction and industrial sites, and 60 inspectors.
Out of all the sites there are 18 thousand construction sites that must be visited in one visit.
If one inspector is enough to be on average 264 sites per year, that's 15,840 visits for 60 inspectors." This means that even in the best case, the inspectors will not be able to reach all the sites. "If there is a repeat visit to the same site, then on average there are 11 thousand visits Total.
It's a gap of 7,000 visits," explained D.
He added: "Another thing that is important to know is that the laws we are subject to, the occupational safety ordinance, are from the days of the British mandate. The legislation is faltering, the next government must enact contemporary laws, the punishments cannot be in the currency of pounds."
Comments
The labor branch of the Ministry of Economy stated that "in 2019, the Level 433 unit was established in Labhav, whose purpose is to investigate work accidents. Investigators from the Safety Administration were assigned to this unit. At the same time, the Safety Administration currently has an investigation unit in each district with a total of six investigators, and these days tenders were published for 20 Additional inspector standards, some of which will be directed to the field of investigations. According to an agreement signed at the end of 2018, 53 additional inspectors were recruited to the Safety Administration in 2019. In addition, seven additional inspectors have just been approved by the Civil Service Commission and are in the process of recruitment. Recently, an expert salary agreement was approved for all inspectors .
We also noted that this month a certification course was held for ten more supervisors who were recruited, so that the manpower situation will increase to 80 supervisors in total, and this is even before the new recruitment of 20 additional supervisors for whom tenders have been published.
As for vehicles, it was reported that "since 2019, attached vehicles and vehicle maintenance have been assigned to each inspector in accordance with the Commission's rules. In addition, the Safety Administration has operational vehicles for use by all inspectors in the districts."
The organization Line for Work stated that the number of serious accidents in recent years is only increasing.
"The Ministry of the Economy must urgently invest in the personnel responsible for supervising and enforcing the safety and proofreading instructions in the field. As long as the inspectors, who are responsible for performing the most challenging work, do not have all the tools to successfully fulfill their role, the situation will not improve and the lives of the workers will continue to be desolate. The Ministry of the Economy We need to fulfill the commitment given to the Supreme Court already in 2019 and increase the number of inspectors in the country, improve the conditions of the inspectors in order to preserve quality personnel, assign vehicles for field visits, and invest in ongoing training and education."
news
News in Israel
Society and welfare
Tags
Work accidents
construction sites
