Never Again Children on Construction Sites
- Lim Tola
- January 13, 2020 4:24 AM
The 36 persons who died in the collapse of a hotel under construction in Kep Province all deserve to be respectfully acknowledged as the unfortunate victims of mishaps—if not fraud—which occurred during construction.
Among them are six children
Six children who have died under tons of concrete.
This article is dedicated to them.
Some of them were there not because they had broken into the site to play children’s games as children the world over might do, oblivious to the possible danger.
Some of them were there because this was where they lived.
They lived there because their parents worked at the construction site.
But even though they worked their heart and soul to build that hotel, their parents did not earn enough to pay the rent on a shelter for their children so they could be protected from the dangers of such a construction site.
As if this was an act of infinite kindness, the developers had authorized them to live on site.
One could summarize this as follows: Project developers invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the construction of a hotel but did not have enough resources to adequately pay workers who built it so that those workers could provide their children with a life in secure surroundings. Those developers also seemed not to have had enough resources to build temporary shelters for their workers’ families.
Access to any construction site should be prohibited to the public—also meaning workers’ family members--and it is up to project developers to make sure this is the case. And this must be enforced by the authorities.
If you say fine but there could be exceptions, just remember those six children: six children who died crushed under tons of concrete.
