Three Palestinian workers from the area of Nablus in the occupied West Bank were killed in Israel on Tuesday, July 13, in the same number of separate work-related incidents. Their deaths brought the number of fatalities in work accidents this year to 36, including 20 in the construction industry.

Annas Walid Alzaga, 23, a resident of Nablus, was electrocuted to death at a construction site in the city of Petah Tikva in the center of the country. The developer and the municipality had not properly reported the site to the Labor Ministry, and it was therefore unsupervised. The police detained the site’s contractor and safety manager. Preliminary investigations revealed that while standing on the building’s scaffolding Alzaga was electrocuted by an exposed electrical cable he had been using to operate one of his tools.

In an accident in the southern coastal city of Ashdod, 24-year-old Abdallah Galeb Jaber from the village of Aqraba in the Nablus Governorate was killed when he fell from scaffolding and struck an iron bar. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The police said they have arrested three people suspected of causing his death through negligence, including the site manager.

In Beit She’an in the north, Maher Al-Hajj Youssef, 60, from Tubas (northeast of Nablus) was killed after falling into a sewage pit of a factory in the city’s industrial area. A preliminary investigation indicated that Youssef was standing on top of a cover used to secure the pit while performing cleaning work. The cover collapsed under his weight and he fell into the pit, which was more than 2 meters deep.

Hadash has called for a demonstration today (Friday) at 11:00 near the building site of Gindi Corporation at 2, Carlebach Street in Tel Aviv where another worker, Ramiz Kantryia from the Republic of Georgia, died in a work accident on July 4. The demonstration is to protest the plethora of construction accidents due to inadequate governmental supervision and to call for reparations for the accident victims and their families

 Open-Ended Strike in Hospitals

Some 13,000 administrative and housekeeping staff in 30 government hospitals across the country launched an open-ended strike Tuesday, July 13, to protest severe shortages in personnel and excessive overwork of existing staff.

The strike has highlighted the importance of administrative staff, a sector that mostly goes unnoticed by hospital patients and visitors. Most pronounced after just a day into the strike was the piles of trash that had accumulated, in a medical setting where hygiene and cleanliness are imperative.

During the strike, there will be no administrative, maintenance, cleaning and kitchen services or nursing aides in the wards, except in departments that provide urgent care. In addition to general hospitals, the strike encompasses psychiatric, rehabilitation and geriatric medical institutions.

Related:

• Hadash Faction of Histadrut Calls for Demonstration at Collapse Site
• Hadash Protests Fatal Construction Accident that Left 4 Dead in Yavne
• Hadash, CPI Form Working Group to Combat Construction Accidents
• Hadash & CPI Protesters Cry Out as Construction Site Accidents Mount
• Hospital Workers Threaten to Strike against Government Cuts