14ymedio, Havana, 21 February 2022 — 14ymedio, Havana, 21 February 2022 — At least 21 workers were injured, four of them seriously, in the city of Cárdenas (Matanzas) when a cement slab under construction collapsed. The accident occurred around one o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday at Genes 562 between Calzada and Coronel Verdugo, according to Yumurí public TV.
The most seriously injured were taken to the Julio Aristegui Villamir hospital after being rescued from the rubble.
The director of the medical center, Luis Enrique Bone Cobos, indicated around 8 pm that all of them were progressing satisfactorily, three of them being reported for care without complications and the remaining pending discharge after observation confirmed that he was in optimal condition.
The authorities are investigating the causes of the accident, which is still unknown, although it is believed that there was a failure in the structures that were supposed to support the slab under construction.
Although details about how the events unfolded are also unknown, everything indicates that the work tasks were carried out in a dwelling and that the “workers” were actually a brigade of volunteers who helped with the work.
On September 27, Cubiza engineer Miguel Díaz Sistachs died in an accident at work, when he was trying to place a flagpole in the Plaza Cívica José Martí de Marianao (Havana) for the celebrations for the 61st anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). The case came to light when it was published by 14ymedio, since the company tried to hide it and pressured the family not to give information to the independent press.
A month later, the state company, in an act in which the former spy Gerardo Hernández was present, paid tribute to the deceased “fallen in the line of duty.”
In 2020, one person died and 26 were injured in a traffic accident between a Kato de Cubiza crane and a public transport bus that served the Santiago de Cuba-Baconao route.
One of the worst years for victims of work accidents in Cuba was 2016, when up to September there were 79 work accidents that left 89 dead. Barely a year later the number was reduced to 44 events with 51 deaths. In 2020, when activity was lower due to the pandemic, there were 32 fatal accidents with 33 deaths and 14 deaths on the road.
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