(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 13 - A 27-year-old worker died near Siracusa Wednesday in the latest in a long spate of fatal workplace accidents in Italy.
    The young man reportedly ended up under a mechanical vehicle while he was working on a piece of land.
    It was the second workplace fatality in two days in Italy.
    On Tuesday a 69-year-old male worker died after being hit by a forklift in a paper mill in the province of Lucca Premier Giorgia Meloni recently announced that the government has approved the recruitment of 1,600 new labour inspectors, amid the alarm about the spate of workplace deaths.
    National labour accidents and occupational illness agency INAIL said last week that 776 fatal work-related accidents were reported to it in the first nine months of 2024, a rise of 2% on the equivalent period in 2023.
    Concern over workplace safety was heightened by the June death of Satnam Singh, an off-the-books 31-year-old Indian farm labourer who bled out after being dumped outside his hut with an arm severed by wrapping machinery placed beside him on a fruit picking box at Latina south of Rome.
    Five men died after inhaling toxic gas in a sewer network near Palermo in May, and seven died in a hydro power plant blast near Bologna in April.
    Meanwhile there has been a steady stream of more than daily individual deaths. (ANSA).