Rami Ayoub, 43, who owned an aluminum frame and glass business, was killed Tuesday, June 11, when he fell six stories from an office building in Haifa where he was installing windows. His was the 38th work-related death in Israel this year, and the 22nd worker killed in a construction site accident.
Rami Ayoub was killed Tuesday, June 11, when he fell six stories from an office building in Haifa, the city in which he lived and died, a view of which he captured in this selfie. (Photo: Al Ittihad)
Police have launched an investigation into the circumstances of the accident, which occurred on Tshernichovksy Street. Earlier on Tuesday, a 49-year-old worker fell from a height of four stories from a building on Haifa’s Allenby Street and was seriously injured.
On Monday a Chinese worker, Zhu Li-Tau, 46, was killed when a heavy object struck him at a construction site in Petah Tikva. According to the Labor Ministry, while concrete was being poured part of the cement pump sleeve disconnected and hit the worker. The building site, run by Omer Engineering, was closed by order of the Labor Ministry.
MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash) said, “For the past few months the work of government ministries has been frozen, and this inaction of the neo-liberal, far-right government is expected to continue for the next few months due to the do-over elections scheduled for September. Only accidents in factories and at building sites continue unabated throughout the country.”
“Not only has the number of work accidents since the start of the year risen sharply compared to the same period last year, but this is the second year in a row that there’s been such a rise – and we are only at the start of the hellish season for fatal accidents, which peaks in August,” said Attorney Hadas Tagari, director of the Coalition Against Construction and Industrial Accidents.
Attorney Israel Assal, legal adviser to the Forum to Prevent Work Accidents, agreed: “Despite the blood being spilt we still don’t see how Labor Minister Haim Katz and his ministry are making an effort to prevent the next accident. It’s about time for the ministry inspectors to go out into the field and enforce work safety laws. Even with 18 inspectors for 15,000 construction sites, there can be hundreds of indictments filed against violators that will convey a clear message to contractors that workers lives are not worthless.”
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