Search goes on for missing worker at Florence collapse site

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 18 - A search is continuing at a supermarket building site in Florence for a missing Romanian worker amid vanishingly thin hopes of finding him alive after four other workers, one Romanian, two north Africans and an Italian, were killed in the disaster Friday morning.
    The search for the last worker missing under the collapse at the Via Mariti building site for the new Esselungia supermarket continued over night, but still without result and with the final death toll all but confirmed at five in a tragedy that has put the spotlight back on workplace safety in Italy amid a spate of fatal work accidents.
    Nonethless, the fire brigade is working with dozens of personnel and Usar (Urban search and rescue) teams specialised in searching for and rescuing missing persons among the rubble.
    At the same time, night operations have secured the building site, where the pile of large prefabricated concrete beams that came down in the 16 February collapse is at risk. The construction site is under sequestration.
    Four people have been confirmed dead so far.
    Two dead North African workers may not have been in order with their residence permits, union sources told reporters on Saturday.
    Meanwhile unions called on the government of Premier Giorgia Meloni to extend the same safety protocols that public-sector workers enjoy to the private sector.
    Alessandro Genovesi, head of Fillea, the CGIL construction workers, in an interview with La Repubblica: "I challenge Prime Minister Meloni to make a decree that would bring the protections of Articles 41 and 119 of the Public Contracts Code also to private construction sites above 500,000 euro.
    "And I invite all parties to vote for it.
    "Just a few lines are enough".
    The accident happened after a retaining concrete beam collapsed, bringing the whole building down on the workers underneath.
    Some sources have pointed to potentially shoddy building materials being used.
    Unions have called strikes to call for urgent government action to up safety on worksites amid the spate of fatal accidents in Italy. (ANSA).