Almost all the construction sites of the colossal Grand Paris Express (GPE) project, or 140 sites, are at a standstill 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 SGP, 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 construction sites" to take part in "awareness workshops," said the SGP, the public institution dedicated to the construction of the GPE. Workers must also attend "presentations of current security measures and a number of measures that will be deployed soon," adds the SGP, which told AFP that these measures should be announced on May 17.

An annual awareness day

"I call it the 'pipeau-communication' day," Jean-Pascal François, federal secretary of the CGT Construction, told AFP. "It's a (annual) day like that but one a month is better," he said. "We have to wait for five deaths and 19 serious accidents to raise awareness?" asks Jean-Pascal François.

On 6 April, a 21-year-old Malian apprentice, Seydou Fofana, died crushed to death by a concrete block in Gonesse, 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 work began 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 heavy load during a handling operation.

The 200 kilometres of the Grand Paris Express include four new automatic metro lines, numbered 15 to 18, as well as extensions of lines 11 and 14. Articulated around a circular line, several branches must connect the airports of Orly and Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, the scientific center of Saclay and the working-class districts of Seine-Saint-Denis currently underserved. The new lines are due to enter service between 2025 and 2030.

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