More than 10 per cent of workplace deaths this year have been of non-national workers, new figures from the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) show today.
Non-national workers have accounted for five out of the 47 deaths in the workplace this year to date. Tens of thousands of workers from the new EU member states have taken jobs in the high-risk construction, quarrying and farming.
HSA spokesman Tom Sutton
The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) said: "It's is of great concern to us that three out of 13 deaths in the construction industry were of non-national workers when they represent a much smaller percentage of the 200,000-strong workforce," said HSA spokesman Tom Sutton.
He went on to say that the HSA knew that language was a major barrier that prevented safety information being understood.
Last January, two Dublin waste disposal companies were fined €80,000 following the death of a Polish worker in May 2000. Theresa Kwiatkowski (44) was struck by the mechanical arm of an excavator while she was manually salvaging timber from a rubbish heap.
The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 that comes into force on September 1st requires employers to provide safety information in a form that can be understood by their employees.
The HSA has produced a safety plan in Turkish and Polish that uses symbols and colours to communicate dangers and risks to non-English speaking workers. It is planning to translate the plan, and an accompanying DVD, into another 10 languages within the next year.
"We'll be co-operating with the employers groups but also with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions because they have mechanisms of communicating with these workers," said HSA chief executive Tom Beegan.
Additional reporting PA