Chilean salmon sector 'must take responsibility for contractor safety'
Senator demands action after diving tragedy takes farms death toll to 11 this year
A Chilean senator has called for the urgent creation of a working group to tackle the level of fatalities in the country’s salmon industry, with 11 workers dead in work accidents this year alone.
Los Lagos region Socialist Party senator Fidel Espinoza’s demand follows the death of a 27-year-old diver at a Mowi salmon farm in the Aysén region last week.
“We have been shaken by these serious situations that are occurring. Another diver has died. This adds up to 11 lives lost this year alone, and we believe the situation is becoming worrying and unsustainable,” the senator stated in a press release.
“While the Diver’s Law provides better legal recourse for families, we don't want any more victims. The industry must assume much greater responsibility to better oversee the subcontracting they themselves carry out. Public agencies must play a more proactive role, not just a reactive one, in the face of tragedy.”
'Preventable accidents'
Espinoza called on “the Government to establish, just as we did with the Diver’s Law, an urgent working group to better understand the situation affecting us with workplace accidents, which in the vast majority of cases are absolutely preventable”.
“The death of the last diver is the first case in which the Diver’s Law has been applied, which means the contracting company must assume immediate responsibility for what happened. But we don’t want to continue down this path, where we are only reacting to another accident,” the senator stated.
He said: “It is essential that the Regional Labour Secretariat, the Labour Directorate, and all related agencies, such as the Maritime Authority, sit down and discuss in depth this serious situation that we are experiencing in the southern regions of Chile, particularly Los Lagos and Aysén. Eleven human lives could have been saved, and these tragedies were absolutely avoidable.”
“It is tremendously regrettable, very sad, but it urges us, as we did with the Supersol Law, the Diver’s Law, and the garbage collectors, to safeguard and defend people’s lives above any profit generated by the industry,” concluded the senator.
The 11 fatalities comprise six crew members of the Konimo 1, a fish farm contract service vessel that sank at its mooring in the Reloncaví estuary during the night on January 27, and five divers.
