Chairman Jang In-hwa of POSCO Group visited the highway construction site of POSCO E&C on the 9th to inspect safety measures following a series of worker fatalities.
On that day at 9 a.m., Chairman Jang visited the construction site of the Gyeonggi Province Gwangmyeong-Seoul Highway, where POSCO E&C is in charge of construction, and presided over a special safety task force meeting for about two hours.
Former Vice Minister of Employment and Labor Park Hwa-jin, Korea Industrial Safety Association Chairperson Lim Mu-song, and other external safety experts, along with POSCO Labor Union Chairperson Kim Sung-ho, attended the meeting. POSCO E&C was represented by President Song Chi-young, Head of the Safety and Health Center Kim Hyun-chul, and the heads of each project.
Chairman Jang reportedly said during the meeting, "I deeply reflect on the series of accidents. It is a priority to accurately identify the root causes of the incidents."
Chairman Jang instructed that external experts and the company's management diagnosis team begin a joint investigation to swiftly identify the causes and prepare improvement measures. It was reported that measures to involve workers as stakeholders in safety prevention and site-centered risk identification and improvement were also discussed in the meeting.
At the construction site of POSCO E&C, several fatalities of workers have occurred this year while on the job. President Lee Jae-myung criticized the situation during a cabinet meeting on the 29th of last month, asking whether it could be considered "murder through negligence," and POSCO promised to prepare countermeasures at the group level.
However, just six days later on the 4th, a worker from Myanmar was found unconscious after apparently suffering an electric shock while checking a pump installed in an underground water puddle at the Gwangmyeong-Seoul highway construction site. Jeong Hee-min, the representative of POSCO E&C, expressed his intention to resign the following day, on the 5th.
President Lee instructed a thorough investigation into POSCO E&C and to explore all legally possible punitive measures, including the revocation of its construction license. POSCO E&C has halted operations at all construction sites across the country.