A total of 1,970 people including 56 children lost their lives in workplace accidents in Turkey in 2016, according to a new report released by theWorkers Health and Work Safety Assembly (İSİG), a nongovernmental organization campaigning for higher safety standards.
The İSİG report revealed that 1,682 of the victims were laborers and civil servants, while 288 of them were farmers and salespeople.
According to İSİG, most of the work-related deaths took place in sectors in which employees are not members of a labor union and have low job security.
Eighteen of the work-related accident victims were below the age of 14, while 38 of them were aged between 15 and 17.
Turkey’s most heavily populated city, İstanbul, ranked the first in the number of work-related deaths with 262, followed by Kocaeli with 89 and Bursa with 81 deaths.
Turkey has been suffering from low work safety standards for decades. Workplace accidents are nearly a daily occurrence in the country. In the worst work-related accident in Turkey’s history, 301 miners lost their lives in a mine in Manisa’s Soma district in May 2014.