A Palestinian construction worker was killed Sunday when he was struck in the head by stones that fell from a ceiling at a Jerusalem renovation site, making him the 42nd person to die in a work accident in Israel so far this year.
The work site where the 42-year-old man was killed was not reported as required to the local authorities or the Labor Ministry, and the police are investigating the accident.
Twenty-two of the work fatalities this year have been in the construction sector.
According to information collected by a work safety advocacy group, SafeWork Israel, this number is higher than during the same period last year, when 34 people were killed in work-related accidents, 19 of them in construction.
Hadas Tagari, SafeWork Israel’s director, called on the Economy Ministry to condition “every addition of workers to the construction industry on additions to proper funding and the filling of safety inspector positions to ensure the safety of workers.”
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On Saturday, a construction worker was seriously injured in a renovation site in the town of Baka al-Garbiyeh in central Israel. Last month, a 33-year-old construction worker from Umm al-Fahm was killed when a roof collapsed on him at a construction site in Herzliya. The municipality had given a permit to the owners of the site where the worker, Sa’ada Agbariyah, was killed. However, it did not report the beginning of work at the site to the Labor Ministry, as required by law.
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