דו"ח מינהל הבטיחות מינואר 2023 : תקציר וכמה מסקנות

By: Omri Nissani, civil engineer, licensed insurance agent

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration at the Ministry of Labor (hereinafter: the "Safety Administration" or the "Administration") published last January (2023) findings from a comprehensive and important study on regulation, supervision and enforcement in occupational safety issues, between the years 2016-2022 .

As an insurance agency that has been dealing with construction insurance for about 35 years , and operates not only on the professional level but also in market education and increasing awareness, we saw fit to review the document. This is in order to briefly present to you some of the main things that arise from it, especially in the context of the construction industry and the safety of its workers.

In the following short review, we will look at trends in the scope of work accidents in Israel from the report, we will examine how effective the state's enforcement activity is, we will deal with the main causes of death in fatal accidents, we will refer to the proportion of foreign and Palestinian workers in the casualty/killed gravestone, and more.

First of all, a positive point: before we start with negative aspects, it is worth noting several trends of improvement that emerged from the report, and which, according to the Safety Administration, intensified in 2020-2022. The most prominent of them are a continuous and consistent decrease in the scope of work accidents (fatal and non-fatal). A trend that applies even more strongly in the construction industry and which has increased Israel's ranking in the field compared to European countries. It also seems that the state has internalized the obligation it has to take care of workers in general and construction workers in particular, and this is reflected in increased enforcement and supervision.

(In the enclosed article, we note that there are those who claim that the data presented by the Safety Administration are biased for the better in order to present a better picture of the data. We will not enter into this debate and will review the report here as such).