Three workers die in a sewer shaft

On 1 September, three employees of the Kalinkavichyvodokanal branch died in Kalinkavichy, Belarus: a 44-year-old site manager and two fitters aged 43 and 37.

According to preliminary information from the Investigative Committee, the team was carrying out scheduled maintenance work at a sewage pumping station. The workers were supposed to clear household waste from so-called “trap baskets” located inside a sewer shaft containing wastewater.

After some time, the workers stopped responding. A colleague was sent to the station. He found their personal belongings and saw a torch floating in the shaft. Management then called the emergency services. Rescuers recovered the bodies of the three men from the sewer shaft.

Investigators took air and wastewater samples and seized occupational health and safety documentation. The causes of the tragedy are being established. But even now, this case once again raises questions not only about the formal existence of instructions, logs and occupational safety documents, but about how workplace safety is actually monitored in practice.

No independent trade union means no independent oversight. No independent oversight means workers’ protection becomes a formality.

In Belarus, the occupational safety system increasingly appears to be part of the administrative hierarchy, where compliance with production and labour discipline becomes more important than genuine oversight of the conditions in which people carry out dangerous work and of who is responsible for their safety.

At the same time, workers have virtually no independent mechanism of oversight. Independent trade unions, which could demand inspections of working conditions, raise the issue of stopping dangerous work and push for an independent investigation, have been dismantled by the authorities.

Where there is no independent workers’ organisation at an enterprise, workers are left alone with the employer and the internal control system.

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