Accident claim news
23/04/2007

Olympic construction accident raises safety concerns

There are fears that China's speedy preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics could be exposing huge numbers of workers to the risk of construction accidents.

The games are due to begin on 8th August next year and a massive construction programme has been implemented to ensure that the city is ready for the monumental event. More than 300,000 houses are said to have been demolished to make space for the stadiums, gymnasiums and training centres that the games require and countless migrants have been drafted in from the countryside to work on the building sites.

With little over a year until the Olympics begins, there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that everything is in place and some people are concerned that the haste is leading to unnecessary personal injuries caused by construction accidents.

One such building site accident resulted in the deaths of six workers and the Beijing News commented, "If a project is racing towards an early finish, there must surely be suspicions about quality. The accident exposed the neglect of some construction companies."

The work accident in question occurred on 28th March and saw the collapse of an underground railway tunnel that was connecting the Olympic Village to Beijing. Five bodies have so far been recovered from the site of the construction accident and rescue workers are still attempting to reach the sixth.

The construction company responsible for the project is state-run and labourers employed to build the tunnel have alleged that the accident was not reported to the emergency services for at least eight hours. So desperate was the firm to keep the tragic building site accident covered up that workers have claimed they were initially kept locked inside the site and had their mobile phones confiscated while company officials attempted their own rescue.

Some individuals have suggested that site bosses tried to cover up the construction accident for fear that the Chinese government would come down hard on anybody seen to be tarnishing the image of their Olympics. There have also been allegations that corners might have been cut which could have contributed to the work accident.

Chinese labour conditions have been much criticised in the past and it seems that things haven't got much better. A massive 127,000 people died in industrial accidents in 2005 and many of the workers employed on Olympic sites have been brought in from all over China and live in crowded dormitories. Sometimes they are not paid on time, if at all, and there is a distinct lack of effective trade unions to look after their rights.

In addition, making a personal injury compensation claim following a construction accident in China can prove somewhat tricky and so injured workers are often left to deal with the problem themselves without support. No system of legal aid or provision for no win, no fee claims exists in China. This means that making a work injury compensation claim in China can be a very fraught business.

Discussing construction, a Hong Kong based expert told the Telegraph newspaper, "It's one of the worst industries. The workers are almost 100% migrant labour from the countryside.

"There's a very high accident rate and very few of them have employment contracts, so they are not covered by medical insurance, supposed to be mandatory."

For more information about the 2008 Olympics, take a look at http://en.beijing2008.cn.