Head of the Directorate of Labor Gissur Pétursson said 20 of the 29 foreign-born workers, who were in a bus accident in east Iceland on Sunday, are not legally registered in the country.
Pétursson also claimed that legally obligated tariffs had not been paid in relation to some of the workers’ salaries this year, Fréttabladid reports.
The workers in question are participating in the Kárahnjúkar dam project in the eastern highlands on behalf of the contractor company Arnarfell. They were hired through sub-contractors, the German company Hunnebeck Polska and the Icelandic companies GT-verktakar ehf. and Spöng ehf.
Pétursson said the workers who were not legally registered in the country may not be entitled to the health services they require after the accident.
Oddur Fridriksson, the main shop steward of Kárahnjúkar dam, said all foreign-born workers should be registered at the Directorate of Labor from their first day of work. That did not happen in this case, he said.
Fridriksson said he had suspected that the employees of the sub-contractors were not legally registered in Iceland and notified the Directorate of Labor. He said there may be about 60 workers at Kárahnjúkar in total who are not working legally.
According to Pétursson, the status of the other workers will be investigated in the near future.
Managing director of Spöng ehf. Ingibjörg Sigurbergsdóttir did not agree with the above claims. She said the three workers employed by Spöng who were in the bus accident were all legally registered in Iceland.
Owner of GT-verktakar Trausti Finnbogason, said the employment contracts of its four workers who were in the bus accident on Sunday had not yet been submitted to the Directorate of Labor because of summer vacations.
“We were just a bit late,” Finnbogason said, adding the Directorate of Labor would receive the contracts in the next few days.
Click here to read about the bus accident on Sunday.
