Almost all of the sites of the colossal Grand Paris Express (GPE) project, i.e. 140 sites, are on hold this Wednesday for a day of safety awareness, after a fifth fatal work accident in early April. The objective is to recall that “safety remains the priority for everyone and that nothing, neither costs nor delays, can justify a breach of the safety of companions”, according to the Société du Grand Paris.
This “strictly internal” operation, which must be renewed each year, should allow “all employees of the Société du Grand Paris (SGP) and people working on the sites” to take part “in awareness workshops” , told AFP the SGP, the public establishment dedicated to the construction of the GPE. The workers must also attend “presentations of the current security measures and a certain number of measures which will be deployed soon”, adds the SGP, which specified to AFP that these measures should be announced on May 17.
An annual awareness day
“I call it the day” pipeau-communication “”, reacted to AFP Jean-Pascal François, federal secretary of the CGT Construction. “It’s good, one day (annual) like that, but one per month is better, he asserts. Do we have to wait for five deaths and 19 serious accidents to raise awareness? »
On April 6, a 21-year-old Malian apprentice, Seydou Fofana, died crushed by a concrete block in Gonesse, in Val-d’Oise, on the site of the future line 17. This fatal work accident is the fifth on the Grand Paris Express site since the start of work in 2015. The previous death occurred in early March on the site of the Blanc-Mesnil station: the victim, employed by a transport company, had been hit by a load heavy during a handling operation.
The 200 kilometers of the Grand Paris Express include four new automatic metro lines, numbered 15 to 18, as well as extensions of lines 11 and 14. Articulating around a circular line, several branches are to connect Orly airports and Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, the scientific center of Saclay and the popular districts of Seine-Saint-Denis which are currently poorly served. The new lines should come into service between 2025 and 2030.