"Hand sucked into the machine"... Another 50-year-old dies in a jamming accident

<Anchor>

Yesterday and today, there was a series of accidents where workers died at work. In Yangju, Gyeonggi-do, a worker in his 50s who was working late at night at a factory was caught in a machine and lost his life. Although it was a dangerous machine operation, it seems that the safety measures were insufficient.

This is reporter Hyung-woo Jeon.

<Reporter> An

ambulance and a fire engine pass one after another in front of the factory.

Yesterday (19th) at around 11pm at a plastic recycling plant in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, a 50-year-old Mr. Choi got caught in a machine and died while working.

At the time of the accident, Choi's hand, who was working on inserting plastic strings into the extruder, was sucked into the extruder with a high temperature of close to 300 degrees Celsius.

At the time of the accident, three workers were working the night shift together, and there was a colleague about 5,6m away from Choi, but this could not prevent the catastrophe.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor is investigating the circumstances of the accident, focusing on the fact that there was no protective cover at the inlet of the extruder where the accident occurred.

[Ministry of Employment and Labor Official: Putting a protective cover on the inlet of the extruder or such measures are insufficient, so we focus on that part (investigation.)]

According to the rules of the Industrial Safety and Health Standards, a cover must be placed in front of a rotating shaft or conveyor belt where there is a risk of being caught. must be installed.

[President of the company: If you do something like protection (cover), the machine will not function. We don't go deep. But now there are people who stretch out deeply. Because not all people are the same.]

A company official said, "There is no safety equipment other than wearing gloves." "There is an emergency stop button on the machine, but it was already too late."

The number of full-time workers at the factory where the accident occurred was 4, and 38% of industrial accident deaths last year occurred at workplaces with fewer than 5 workers.

(Video editing: Yonghwa Jung, VJ: Jaemin Roh)