Five Iranian Construction Workers Killed on the Job Every Day

An Iranian citizen journalist, who writes under a pseudonym to protect his identity, wrote the following article on the ground inside Iran.

Say, have you seen a red mulberry fall?
Seen how it shares its redness with the earth?
Falling is pain, all pain
I have seen many mulberries, nay, workers sharing their redness with the earth.

This short poem, written by a young man from Kermanshah, is a concise summary of the fate of many construction workers in Iran today. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, on average five Iranian workers die every day as a result of occupational accidents across the country. 

A large number of these work-related fatalities are a result of companies’ failure to comply with safety guidelines. A lack of appropriate education is also to blame: workers are often not briefed properly about the dangers of the job and risk their  lives through negligence. For example, on many construction sites, workers can be seen standing and working on high above the ground without any safety equipment in place.

I see this every day, so statistics are not really necessary. When one sees how safety measures are ignored, it is easy to grasp the level of risk workers are exposed to all the time, and the serious dangers of ignoring safety standards. Hardly a days goes by without newspapers and news sites reporting that one or more workers have died as a result of work-related accidents in cities, towns or villages. Some fall to their deaths, some die from electric shocks and some are buried under tons of earth in tunnels and wells.

Annual statistics published by the Ministry of Labor and the Legal Medicine Organization show that on average, between 1,400 to 1,900 Iranian workers die every year due to work-related accidents.

Contributing Factors

According to labor activists, a lack of training for construction workers and lack of safety equipment — including suitable clothing for working, protective helmets, work gloves and safety belts — both contribute to the situation, though they are not the only factors. Construction site workers are also forced to work long shifts, which sap their strength and the concentration, leading to high mortality rates among Iranian workers.

Every year, to coincide with Labor Day on May 1, the Legal Medicine Organization publishes a report on work-related fatalities. The last one was published on May 3, 2015, and showed that in the previous year, 1,891 Iranian workers lost their lives in work-related accidents. As high as the figure is, it shows a slight decrease in fatalities, down 2.5 percent compared with the previous year, during which 1,994 workers lost their lives.

The Legal Medicine Organization has published these statistics since 2004. Since then, the rate of such fatalities has generally increased, until 2014 which showed a slight decrease on the previous year, similar to the 2015 findings.

In 2014, the number of men and women who lost their lives was 1,878 and 13 respectively. In 2013, the corresponding numbers were 1,967 and 27.

According to the published statistics regarding 2014, falling from dangerous heights was the number one cause of work-related fatalities. The next most common cause was being hit by heavy and solid objects and electric shocks. All in all, 862 people died as a result of falling, 418 were crushed by large or solid objects, 286 were killed by electric shocks, 98 were asphyxiated, and 72 died due to burns. A further 155 lost their lives for various other reasons.

50 Percent of Fatalities Are Construction Workers 

Ministry of Labor statistics consistently show that a large proportion of work-related fatalities occur in the construction sector. Around half of all work-related fatalities occur within the construction industry.

In 2014, the Ministry of Labor announced it was launching a project to boost safety in the workplace. It sought to reduce work-related accidents and said it would carry out inspections in workplaces. 

Apart from the human cost of work-related fatalities, the financial costs are also substantial. According to a report published by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the “Gross Domestic Product (GDP) lost in work-related injuries and diseases [in Iran] is more than that of the total GDP lost in Africa, the Arab States and South Asia combined, and greater than the cost of all official governmental development financial assistance to the world's developing countries.” Based on ILO estimates, the death of a worker costs the economy more than $300,000, and on average results in a net loss of 17,500 workdays.

Morvarid Heydari, Citizen journalist, Isfahan