Today, Sunday 28 April, is the World Day for Health and Safety at Workbut unfortunately Italy and the Piedmont they still matter too many victims.
“At the end of the first two months of 2024, as far as fatal accidents at work are concerned, the situation in Piedmont appears to be more comforting than in 2023 and this is demonstrated by the decrease in the number of victims. Go from 1pm at the end of February 2023 to 7am last February. But Piedmont is still in the orange zone, i.e. in that area where the risk of death among workers is equal to or higher than the country average“, underlines the president of the Vega Workplace Safety and Environment Observatory of Mestre Mauro Rossato, based on the most recent survey developed by its team of experts. “In fact, we are talking about an incidence rate of worker mortality per million employed equal to 3.9; incidence identical to the national average. So much so that the situation remains critical. Especially in the provinces of Alessandria and Asti which are in the red zone”.
Deaths are decreasing but injuries are increasing
“Unfortunately, if deaths at work decrease in the first two months of 2024, statistics show that, on the other hand, accident reports are increasing, which also include non-fatal events, with an increase of 10% compared to the same period last year. 4%”, adds Rossato again.
To identify the most fragile areas of Italy in terms of workplace safety, the Observatory has developed a mapping of the risk with respect to the incidence of mortality. The orange zone, the one in which Piedmont is located, is the zone which, immediately after the red, groups together the regions with one of the highest incidences of workplace mortality at a national level. And at the end of February 2024, the risk of fatal injury in Piedmont (3.9 deaths per million employed) is identical to the national average, equal to 3.9.
Asti in the red zone, Turin in orange
As regards the incidences, in detail, in the region it turns out that Asti with an incidence of 22.2 and Alessandria with 5.9 are in the red zone. While Turin with an incidence of 4.4 is in the orange zone.
In the white zone all the other Piedmontese provinces in which no fatal accidents at work have been detected.
All the numbers for the first two months of 2024
There were 7 deaths from January to February 2024 (compared to 13 in 2023). And they are all detected during work. The highest number of total deaths occurred in the province of Turin (4). Followed by: Asti (2) and Alessandria (1). The ranking also corresponds when fatal accidents at work are analysed.
There are 7,296 overall injury reports out of a total of 92,711 in Italy, i.e. 7.9% of those reported in Italy. At the end of February 2024, total injury reports grew by 10.4% compared to the end of February 2023: they were 6,608 and are now 7,296.
“After the dramatic explosion in the numbers of injury reports in the time of Covid (between 2020 and 2021, ed), between 2022 and 2023, complaints decreased more than significantly following the end of the health emergency. Now though – underlines President Rossato – the decreases ‘inflated’ since the end of the pandemic unfortunately leave room for a new increase in which there are no longer viruses to justify the worrying trend, but only job insecurity in Piedmont and in our country”.
The manufacturing sector is the most affected
At the end of the first two months of 2024, Manufacturing Activities are at the top of the ranking of accident reports at work (809). They are followed by: Transportation and Warehousing (380), Healthcare (365), Commerce (332) and Construction (264).
And the province of Turin that with the highest number of complaints totals of injury (3,686), followed by: Cuneo (1,354), Alessandria (701), Novara (582), Vercelli (285), Asti (282), Verbano-Cusio-Ossola (224) and Biella (182).
Finally, there were 2,994 accident reports from working women (2,353 at work) and 4,302 from men (3,743 at work). The complaints from foreign workers are 1,409. And there are 1,149 complaints from foreigners on the occasion of work.
