Turkey’s Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG) announced that at least 124 workers died in work-related accidents in June in Turkey, the Diken news website reported on Thursday.
Six of the victims were underage, two of them below the age of 14. These deaths occurred in agricultural and textile-related lines of work.
The accidents claimed the lives of 17 women and 107 men. The deaths of female workers took place in the agricultural and retail sectors.
Of the 124 victims, 90 were working for wages while 34 were farmers or tradespeople running their own businesses.
Among those who died, 13 were migrants, with six Syrians, five Afghans, one Iranian and one Uzbek.
The most frequent causes of death were traffic accidents, exposure to toxic substances, drowning, electric shock, explosions, heart attacks and falls.
İstanbul, the country’s largest city, led in work-related accidents, followed by the industrial northwestern city of Kocaeli and coastal city of Trabzon in the Eastern Black Sea region.
Only one of the victims was a union member.
The report also noted an uptick of 15 percent in work-related deaths after the declaration of a two-year-long state of emergency in 2016.
