Nearly 800 workers die in workplace accidents in six months

The coroner's office of the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced that: "During the first six months of this year 778 workers died in workplace accidents."

According to the report by the public relations and international affairs section of the coroner's office, this is an increase of 18.8% compared with the first half of last year, when 655 workers lost their lives.

Of the fatalities 770 were men and eight were women. According to ISNA news, the total deaths in the previous year were 1,290 – with 1,271 men and 19 women.

Mahmoud Khodadoost, the head of the coroner's office's research centre, said that 264 of deaths in the first five months of this year were caused by falling from a height. He also said that "falling from a height constitutes 41.3% of fatalities [resulting from] workplace accidents." After falling from a height, being struck by a hard object, electrocution, burns and collapsing wells are the other main reasons for the fatalities in the first five months of the year - totalling 375 deaths.

In terms of provinces, Tehran and Esfahan had 107 and 101 deaths respectively, raking first and second place in the workplace fatalities' table.

The rocketing number of fatalities and other workplace accidents in Iran are merely one symptom of the Iranian's regime's brutal policy of smashing all trade unions and other independent workers' organisations. So long as workers do not have the right to strike and to form their own genuine and independent organisations then this terrible statistic, and many others covering all aspects of working class lives, will be getting worse.

Iranian Workers’ Solidarity Network
15 November 2011