A search is continuing at a
supermarket building site in Florence for a missing Romanian
worker amid vanishingly thin hopes of finding him alive after
four other workers, one Romanian, two north Africans and an
Italian, were killed in the disaster Friday morning.
The search for the last worker missing under the collapse at the
Via Mariti building site for the new Esselungia supermarket
continued over night, but still without result and with the
final death toll all but confirmed at five in a tragedy that has
put the spotlight back on workplace safety in Italy amid a spate
of fatal work accidents.
Nonethless, the fire brigade is working with dozens of personnel
and Usar (Urban search and rescue) teams specialised in
searching for and rescuing missing persons among the rubble.
At the same time, night operations have secured the building
site, where the pile of large prefabricated concrete beams that
came down in the 16 February collapse is at risk. The
construction site is under sequestration.
Four people have been confirmed dead so far.
Two dead North African workers may not have been in order with
their residence permits, union sources told reporters on
Saturday.
Meanwhile unions called on the government of Premier Giorgia
Meloni to extend the same safety protocols that public-sector
workers enjoy to the private sector.
Alessandro Genovesi, head of Fillea, the CGIL construction
workers, in an interview with La Repubblica: "I challenge Prime
Minister Meloni to make a decree that would bring the
protections of Articles 41 and 119 of the Public Contracts Code
also to private construction sites above 500,000 euro.
"And I invite all parties to vote for it.
"Just a few lines are enough".
The accident happened after a retaining concrete beam collapsed,
bringing the whole building down on the workers underneath.
Some sources have pointed to potentially shoddy building
materials being used.
Unions have called strikes to call for urgent government action
to up safety on worksites amid the spate of fatal accidents in
Italy.
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