Worker dies in forklift accident in Turkey?s Tuzla shipyards

One worker has died after a work-related accident in Istanbul’s Tuzla shipyards, an area notorious for workplace fatalities, daily Radikal reported Wednesday. Sixty-year-old Mehmet Tağrikulu, who was seriously injured June 14 when he was buried under tons of material in a forklift accident in the private Selay Shipyard, has died in the hospital, Radikal said.
The Shipyard Workers Association, or TİBDER, claimed the injured worker was first taken to a state hospital, but later sent to a private hospital in Istanbul because the state hospital did not have enough room in its intensive-care unit.
Tağrikulu is the 135th worker to have died in accidents in Tuzla since the 1980s.
Worker deaths in shipyards have caused public outrage over the past few years. A parliamentary commission on human rights prepared a report earlier this year about the accidents.
The widespread practice of subcontracting has been blamed as the cause of many of the accidents in the Tuzla shipyards, where production levels have decreased dramatically as a result of the economic crisis. According to the parliamentary commission’s report, the practice results in workers failing to receive adequate safety training.
Accusations have also been made that firms in the Tuzla shipyards paid the families of deceased workers to keep them from holding the companies legally accountable, saving them from having to make potentially larger compensation payments.