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The Act on Punishment of Serious Accidents to prevent accidents that occur in various places in the workplace comes into effect a week later. A contractor worker in his 40s who was managing on-site safety got caught in a heavy equipment that moved coal and died.
This is reporter Lee Hye-mi.
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At around 9:40 am today, 7 workers from subcontractors at the 3 coke factory of POSCO Pohang Works were put in to keep the pipes warm.
There were 6 people working in a group of 2 people, but 41-year-old Jang Mo, who was responsible for worker safety, got caught between a wall and a heavy equipment called a coal-loading vehicle and died.
It is known that Jang has only been in the company for about a week, but he entrusted safety management to an employee with little field experience.
In particular, it was found that the safety rule that the operation of the equipment must be stopped during work was not followed.
[Plant Construction Union official: It is questionable whether various safety trainings were conducted, and the on-site investigation confirmed that the operating facilities were in operation throughout the period of employment.]
POSCO issued an apology in the name of Chairman Choi Jung-woo.
He said that he is doing his best to establish an accident response team and cooperate with related organizations to find out the exact cause of the accident and promptly solve the accident.
POSCO said, however, that the area where the accident occurred had not been approved for prior work.
In February of last year, 14 workers at POSCO also lost their lives in serious accidents over the past four years, including a worker from a partner company who got caught in a machine and died.
The Ministry of Employment and Labor issued an order to stop work at the POSCO site where the accident occurred, and decided to set up a dedicated investigation team to investigate whether safety measures were violated.
(Video editing: Kim Byung-jik, CG: Kang Yu-ra, Shim Soo-hyun)