More than 50 people die each year at production sites in Kyrgyzstan

More than 50 people die each year at production sites in Kyrgyzstan. And this is only official statistics. Chairman of the Mining and Metallurgical Trade Union Eldar Tadzhibaev said at a roundtable discussion today.

According to him, the issue of ensuring people’s safety at work is extremely urgent and important in Kyrgyzstan. At least 120-130 serious industrial accidents are registered every year in the country. More than 600 people get light injuries every year.

«These are only official data obtained as a result of investigations of accidents, state and public control. Such cases remain latent at many enterprises which have no trade unions, and workers do not know labor rights. It should be noted that the number of employees engaged in the informal sector is more than 60 percent. Accordingly, the real number of labor injuries and deaths is many times higher,» Eldar Tadzhibaev said.

He recalled that mining, construction, transport and energy industry are considered to be the most traumatic in Kyrgyzstan. The most common violations in the field of labor protection are: failure to provide security and personal protection, insufficient allocation of funds for activities to ensure safety in the workplace, the admission of untrained and unprepared personnel, failure to meet the security requirements by the employees themselves. But this information is incomplete, because it was obtained on the basis of data from state bodies and trade unions. It is not known what happens in the informal sector, the head of the trade union said.