Poor safety at accident sites

[Anchor]

Recently, it has been confirmed through KBS reporting that both the POSCO E&C construction site where a worker died and the train accident site in Cheongdo, Gyeongbuk, received inadequate safety management ratings during a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport inspection two months ago.

Fatal accidents have occurred at sites that were required to implement safety measures.

Reporter Won Dong-hee has the exclusive report.

[Report]

During the Ministry of Land's inspection in June for monsoon preparedness, the construction site at Cheongdo Station in Gyeongbuk was rated as having 'inadequate safety management'.

It was pointed out that the worker passageways in the area were not properly secured and that slope management was poor.

Following this, heavy rain caused nearby slopes to collapse, and employees who were attempting to restore the area were still moving along the narrow railway and met with tragedy.

The same goes for the highway site of POSCO E&C, which President Lee Jae Myung criticized.

Despite numerous criticisms regarding poor management of earth slopes, a drilling machine entrapment accident occurred two months later amid lax site management.

At the water supply construction site in Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk, a fatal accident occurred just a month after the Ministry of Land's request for safety measures.

A worker in his 60s was killed after being hit by a vehicle while working, without proper traffic management signals or construction signage installed.

The commonality among these accidents is that they all received inadequate ratings during safety inspections and reported to the Ministry of Land that on-site measures had been completed.

Due to a lack of personnel and budget, many inspections were conducted only within a minimal scope or followed up only on paper.

The level of punishment was also low.

There were only about 70 cases of penalties and fines, with most resulting in mere guidance at the site.

[Shin Young-dae/Member of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee/Democratic Party: "Because the follow-up inspections themselves are inadequate, the sites that actually receive instructions perceive them as just one-time measures, which seems to significantly reduce their effectiveness."]

According to the recent nationwide survey of over 2,000 construction sites by the Ministry of Land, a total of over 3,000 safety issues were identified.

Most of these were related to inadequate installation of structures directly connected to safety, such as fall prevention facilities.

Among the top 10 construction companies, Daewoo, DL E&C, Lotte, Hyundai, GS, HDC, and POSCO E&C had the most criticisms.

This is KBS News, Won Dong-hee.