Four workers were killed and two injured Wednesday when an explosion rocked an oil refinery in western Turkey.
The name of the deceased workers were announced as Kemal Şaşmazer, Yusuf Kepenek, Mehmet Karademir and Mehmet Dere.
The explosion occurred during maintenance work on a product tank at the TÜPRAŞ, Turkey's only oil refiner which is owned by Koç industrial holding company. Turkey has a well-above-average rate of occupational murders in its workplaces with the vast majority of casualties coming in private sector. The lastest occupational murder exposed poor safety standards and superficial government inspections again.
TÜPRAŞ has four refineries operating in four different cities across Turkey. Koç Holding’s net profit saw a sharp rise in the second quarter, 2017. Its second-quarter net profit rose to 1.42 billion Turkish Liras ($402.8 million) from 918.1 million liras in the same period a year earlier, it said in a statement to the Istanbul stock exchange on Aug. 18. The 54.4 percent year-on-year increase in the business group’s net profit mainly came from strong contributions of its energy and automotive companies.
Koç Holding’s total revenue hit 23.2 billion liras in the second quarter with a 36 percent year-on-year increase.
TKP: NOT ACCIDENT BUT MURDER
The owner of the refinery, Koç Holding tries to decline any responsibility for the explosion by saying that the cause was gas entrapment. Reacting against these declarations, the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) state "It is not technical dysfunction, but the capital's greed to make more profit".
"The maintenance needed for the storage tank was rushed and safety measures were ignored", the statement underlined. Since the workers were forced to work under these unsafe conditions, the explosion cannot be regarded as an accident.
"Our worker brothers were killed", the statement says, "only because the Koç family wants to profit 2, 3 and 10 times more".
Calling the working population to fight together against these predators and exploiters, the communists state that this system that ignores the life of the workers has to change.
