The Senate on Tuesday OK’d a bill to teach workplace safety amid a long spate of fatal workplace accidents in Italy.
Workplace accident deaths were up 3.2% to 577 in the first seven months of 2024, workplace accident insurance agency INAIL said a month ago.
Premier Giorgia Meloni recently announced that the government has approved the recruitment of 1,600 new labour inspectors, amid an alarm about the spate of workplace deaths in Italy.
Concern has been heightened by the June death of Satnam Singh, an off-the-books 31-year-old Indian farm labourer who bled out after being dumped outside his hut with an arm severed by wrapping machinery placed beside him on a fruit picking box at Latina south of Rome.
Five men died after inhaling toxic gas in a sewer network near Palermo in May, and seven died in a hydro power plant blast near Bologna in April.
Meanwhile there has been a steady stream of more than daily individual deaths.
On Tuesday the Senate approved, in the drafting stage, with 76 yes votes, no votes
against and 54 abstentions, the bill for teaching workplace safety as part of civic education.
The text, which had already received the green light from the Lower House but will have to return there because the provision in the Senate was partially corrected, aims to ensure the dissemination in schools of basic knowledge of labor law and workplace safety, “also through the testimonies of accident victims”, to contribute “to forming citizens aware of workers’ rights, duties and protections”.
Source: Ansa News Agency