HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas speaks to journalists during a protest at the work site.
AFP/DPA/Istanbul
Turkey promised “a plan of action” yesterday to improve workplace safety after a lift crashed to the ground from the 32nd storey of a building, killing 10 people.
The vow comes after police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse 1,000 people who gathered in Istanbul on Sunday to protest about the deaths, which further sullied Turkey’s abysmal work safety record.
“It has become obvious that workplace safety is a vital issue. A plan of action will be put together and unveiled,” Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters following a weekly cabinet meeting.
He added that that a committee of inspectors would be set up to investigate the accident upon the order of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
“From now on regulations and control mechanisms will be implemented more carefully,” he added.
Police have detained 11 people in connection with the tragedy, local media reported yesterday.
Meanwhile, families of the workers, many of whom were migrants from more remote areas of the country, have begun to arrive in Istanbul to collect the bodies and mourn their relatives.
Nine of those questions by the authorities have been released, while two officials from Torunlar Holding, the company behind the project, remain in custody.
The company has rejected responsibility for the accident and says safety inspectors visited the site in May.
Initial investigations show the elevator, carrying workers and heavy equipment, plummeted from the 32nd storey, killing those inside.
Work was taking place outside of regular hours when the accident occurred on Saturday night.
The upmarket building is intended to be 44 floors when finished and so far 36 have been completed.
Work has been halted as investigations are carried out.
Selahattin Demirtas, of the opposition Peoples’s Democratic Party (HDP), claimed that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was protecting the company building the tower.
“These gentlemen are sponsored by the AKP. They have solid backing. So why would they spend money on workers’ safety?” said Demirtas, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish party. “These towers are like headstones for mass graves.”
Workers were quoted by the media as saying that there had been problems with the elevator in recent weeks but their superiors ignored complaints.
Emrah Acar, a worker responsible for the elevator, told the Vatan daily that his supervisors had repeatedly ignored him when he told them the brake mechanism had broken down.
“If they had listened to me, we would not have had this disaster,” he said.
According to Hurriyet newspaper, prosecutors have said the elevator was not carrying weight beyond its capacity and the reason for the collapse remained unclear.
Yesterday dozens of construction workers blocked a busy highway in Istanbul’s working-class Halkali neighbourhood to protest against lax workplace safety measures.
The accident has put Turkey’s poor record on workplace safety under further scrutiny after 301 miners died in May in the western town of Soma, in Turkey’s worst-ever industrial accident.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Turkey has the highest number of work deaths in Europe, and the third highest in the world.
In the past five years 1,754 construction workers have died in Turkey, figures from the Turkish statistics office (TUIK) show.
