DOLE to probe shipyard deaths

BALANGA CITY – Labor Secretary Marianito Roque yesterday ordered his department’s Central Luzon office to investigate exhaustively the rising number of accident-related deaths at the shipyard of Hanjin Heavy Industries Corp.-Philippines at the Subic Bay Freeport.

Roque instructed assistant regional director Alvin Villamor to dispatch a probe team to the Hanjin shipyard to look into the 19 deaths there since 2006, the latest fatality of which was Korean foreman Choi Dong Baek.

“We left it up to the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority to handle the matter. But now we have to determine the working conditions and safety measures being implemented at the shipyard,” he said.

Baek is the first foreign worker killed in an accident at the shipyard.

Baek was run over by a forklift past midnight Sunday in the vicinity of the shipyard’s assembly shop C where metal works were being done.

Last Friday, Raldon del Rosario, a 19-year-old worker of a Hanjin subcontractor, was killed on the spot when the metal base of a newly installed canvass door fell on him. His fellow worker, Camalao Bochie, 24, suffered leg injuries.

Roque was in this Bataan city to award livelihood checks to local government units.