Four construction workers from Maghreb have died in the structural collapse of a supermarket building site in Florence, which occurred on Friday, February 16 and left five people dead. The brother of the Tunisian victim has denounced poor working conditions at the site.
Firefighter units in the evening of Tuesday (February 20) retrieved the body of the last construction worker reported missing in the collapse of an Esselunga supermarket building site in Florence. The victim was identified as Bouzekri Rachimi, a Moroccan citizen. With the retrieval of his body, the final toll of the collapse reported last Friday is of five victims and three wounded.
The victims include three Moroccans and a Tunisian: 43-year-old Taoufik Haidar; 24-year-old Mohamed El Ferhane; 56-year-old Bouzekri Rahimi, the last victim to be found at the site, and 54-year-old Mohamed Toukabri, the only worker from Tunisia.
Tunisian victim's brother in Florence to identify the body
Corriere Fiorentino, the local edition of Corriere della Sera, quoted Sarhan, Toukabri's brother, as saying that "he was just 19 when he left Tunisia to come to Italy. I remember the day he left our city, bidding farewell to our parents. He was happy to leave, he wanted a different future, he boarded a ship and left -- at the time it was possible to travel freely from one shore to another of the Mediterranean."
The man spoke on February 20 while waiting to identify his brother's body. He traveled to Florence from Naples, where he lives and works as a pizza chef, together with the victim's daughter Rim. "They still haven't shown us the body, investigations are ongoing", he explained.
He was supported by the imam of Florence, Izzeddin Elzir, and Fatima Benhijji, an official of the Moroccan consulate who is aiding the other victims.
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'Low salary, half paid under the table. Responsibilities must be ascertained'
Sarhan said he still can't believe what happened: "I spoke to my brother for the last time a week ago, I saw him in a video call, and he told me that he was coming to Naples in a few days to visit us. During that video call, he told me that he had transferred a few days before 500 euros to our parents' bank account in Tunisia. He sent money back home from time to time and, this time, he had sent it to support our family during Ramadan."
He worked hard every day, the victim's brother told the newspaper: "He lived in Bergamo (in Lombardy, northern Italy), he told me that he left every morning with a lorry driven by others to reach the construction site in Florence and he returned home at night to then leave again the following morning. It was a tough job and he said that he didn't earn a lot, half the money was paid regularly while the other half was paid under the table," Sarhan explained.
"He visited our parents during Christmas last year, 33 years after he had left. It was terrible to tell them that my brother was under the rubble. He worked so hard every day but not to die, you can't die while working inside a construction site, there are certainly responsibilities that I hope will be discovered," he concluded.