Ali Ziaei, the head of the Crime Scene Investigation Group at the Iranian Forensics Organization, reported the deaths of 2,115 workers and injuries to 27,000 others due to work-related accidents in 2023.
The state-run ILNA news agency criticized the the Ministry of Labor for concealing statistics and stated that this figure translates to the death of 5.79 workers per day.
Ziaei stated to ILNA that the number of work-related accidents in the past year increased by 11.3% compared to the previous year.
He added that falls from heights consistently accounted for the largest share of casualties, with 983 victims losing their lives due to falls, comprising 46.5% of all fatalities.
In Iran, there is no accurate data regarding work-related accidents, and various sources such as the Iranian Statistical Center, the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, and the Forensics Organization publish different numbers with significant discrepancies.
What the media and labor activists publish based on these numbers, along with their observations and unofficial reports, also significantly deviates from the government statistics.
ILNA reported that on April 29, Ali Hossein Raeiati Fard, the Deputy for Labor Relations of the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, presented new statistics on work-related accidents in the country, stating that there were 680 fatalities in 2023, down from 712 in 2021.
ILNA also questioned whether the Ministry of Labor and its extensive subsidiaries truly lack access to data and the country’s forensics information database in this era of internet dominance and database control over all aspects of existence.
Previously, the Legal Medicine Organization had announced that 900 workers were killed in 2022, while the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare claimed that 711 workers lost their lives due to work-related accidents.
According to a report by the Iranian Human Rights Activists Center in April, at least 1,680 workers lost their lives in the past 12 months (from May 1, 2023, to April 27, 2024), and 8,199 workers were injured during this period.
In March 2024, the Iranian Statistical Center reported only 548 work-related deaths in the fall of 2023.
Taking into account previously announced figures for the spring and summer, a total of 1,625 deaths during work were registered in Iran from March 21 to December 20, 2023.
In September 2023, a legal expert and labor activist, in an interview with the regime’s Payamema newspaper, stated, “Overall, there are no reliable figures in the field of labor. We do not know how many million workers we have, how many minimum wage workers, how many female workers, and how many foreign workers. There is no willingness to publish statistics.”
He explained the discrepancy in figures by stating that official statistics only include insured workers, excluding uninsured workers, foreign nationals, and informal workers, which is the reason behind the differences in statistics.
Ehsan Sohrabi, a labor activist, considered the Ministry of Labor’s approach to statistics on work-related accidents as a clear example of deception and stated to ILNA, “In this era and time, harmonizing statistics is very simple; however, they do not want to accept the realities because if they endorse the realities, they must admit that a considerable number of workers lose their lives every day due to the lack of basic safety principles, and the mortality rate is experiencing a noticeable increase!”
Sohrabi added: “These statistics are just a bunch of numbers for them, but the death of each worker is an irreparable tragedy for a family in the country.”
Based on these fabricated statistics from last year, 2,115 people died due to work-related accidents, which is equivalent to 5.79 worker deaths every day of the year, a number that even the Ministry of Labor does not acknowledge or recognize officially.
According to assessments, Iran ranks 102nd among countries in terms of observing labor safety issues, and the worker mortality rate exceeds global averages.
