Mining safety is an issue in Turkey
Experts say poor oversight from regulators, a weak health and safety culture and an uneducated and unorganized workforce have contributed to making Turkey a particularly dangerous country in which to be a miner. Karl Ritter explains.
ARE DEADLY MINING ACCIDENTS IN TURKEY COMMON?
According to statistics compiled by the International Labor Organization, 1,172 mining deaths were reported in Turkey from 2001 to 2012. That’s about 100 deaths per year. A report in March by the state-run statistics institute says 10.4 per cent of all work accidents are related to mining.
HOW DOES THAT COMPARE WITH OTHER COUNTRIES?
International comparisons are hard to come by because not all countries collect and report statistics in the same way. But experts say the Turkish numbers are still comparatively high. Britain, whose mining sector historically has had a high number of fatalities, saw an average of six mining deaths annually from 2007 to 2012, according to safety officials. That was one per cent of all work-related deaths in Britain during that time.
In the U.S., deaths linked to mining fell below 100 per year in the 1990s and reached historic lows of 35 deaths in 2009 and 2012, according to the U.S. Labor Department. It says the drop is a result of legislation regulating the mining industry and advances in technology, mining methods and training.
China’s mines are notoriously deadly, although safety improvements have significantly reduced the deaths in recent years. More than 1,300 people died in mining accidents in China in 2012 and 1,973 died in 2011, according to the State Administration of Work Safety. The figures do not include missing people.
WHY ARE TURKISH MINES DANGEROUS?
Researchers point to a number of factors, including cultural attitudes toward workplace safety and poor oversight of working conditions and safety standards. For one, Turkey hasn’t ratified the International Labor Organization’s Safety and Health in Mines Convention.
A paper published last year by researchers Yucel Demiral and Alpaslan Erturk at Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir, said health and safety inspections in Turkish mines are divided between different authorities, and the lack of co-ordination among them results in ineffective supervision. Also, their paper points to the lack of education and the low level of organization among Turkish miners as a contributing factor to unsafe working conditions.
Though Turkey’s ambition to join the European Union has prompted it to adopt many of the bloc’s health and safety standards, in many cases EU directives have just been translated into Turkish, but not harmonized with local regulations, leading to confusion. As a result, those regulations haven’t been put into practice, their paper says.