Peruvian worker safety concerns mount with fatal accident

Four construction workers were killed Wednesday on a jobsite in Miraflores, Peru when they were crushed by a collapsing wall.

The men, employees of J & J Engineers, had a license to work, said Manuel Masías, the mayor of Miraflores, but had been lax in implementing safety standards.

Masías said the municipality has eased safety supervision recently in an effort to facilitate project development in the rapidly growing suburb of Lima.

The accident is disturbingly similar to an incident in December that claimed the lives of eight workers in another Lima suburb, La Victoria. Workers with JAA Construction Company were digging a ditch as part of a building construction when a wall of concrete fell on them.

In that case, the company lacked a license to operate and no safety precautions of any type had been taken, officials said.

Peru’s recent economic health has spurred a boom in construction. In February, the sector saw an increase of 22.49 percent over the same month in 2007. But as jobs have boomed so have concerns about worker safety.

According to the Federation of Civil Construction Workers of Peru, 20 workers died in work-related accidents in 2005 and 38 were killed in 2006. Calls to improve worker safety prompted the Peruvian government to tighten laws overseeing the sector and establish an agency to inspect job sites.

Agents with the National Directorate of Inspection of the Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion performed more than 183,000 inspections in 2007 – and increase of more than 60,000 from the year prior.