The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has temporarily stopped the occupational health and safety inspections carried out by inspectors affiliated to the Labor Inspection Board on behalf of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security until the end of June 2018 due to the elections to be held on June 24.
The AKP government, which still cannot provide sufficient employment of labour inspectors, has given the occupational health and safety conditions at workplaces to the initiative of capitalists. Therefore, the number of field examinations in Turkey has gradually decreased every year.
According to the 2016 Social Security Institution’s statistics, there are 1 million 749 thousand workplaces in Turkey; but the Labor Inspection Board supervised only 24,284 of these workplaces, and 14,287 of these inspections were carried out for occupational health and safety.
In 2017, the number of inspections decreased by 6,000 and became 18,812. Only 10,804 of these inspections were carried out for occupational health and safety.
LIVES OF WORKERS ARE INCIDENTAL IF THE GOVERNMENT’S VOTES ARE AT STAKE
Under these circumstances, the cancellation means much more occupational murders across the country. At least 20,000 workers have lost their lives in occupational murders during the AKP government’s 16 years.
The Turkish government had also guaranteed impunity to capitalists for the deficiencies in occupational safety three months before 2014's Soma mine fire in western Turkey that 301 miners were killed.
CAPITALISTS ARE PLEASED WITH AKP'S ANTI-LABOUR POLICIES
Praising the anti-labour practices of the AKP government such as ‘mandatory mediation system’ that prevents workers from appealing to labour courts, the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu had confessed on May 18, "One of the areas we suffered great distress was the judicial system. Especially in the cases of the Labor Courts, 99% of which unfairly punished employers. In order to address this, the mandatory mediation system was put into practice. Cases which lasted months, even years, are now resolved in days and weeks."
The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had previously said that the state of emergency declared after the coup attempt and is still effective has been used to oppress the workers by not allowing them to go on strikes.
