In total, 31 people are known to have died in accidents at work in the first six months of this year, down from 42 in the 2016 first-half, the Telegraaf said on Tuesday, quoting employment ministry inspectors.

Of them, seven were employed in the construction sector, making building workers the most vulnerable to a fatal industrial accident. Farm workers accounted for the next highest number of deaths, the paper said.

The FNV trade union last year opened a hotline for construction workers to report unsafe practices and more than 100 complaints have so far been made. ‘In particular, there are a lot of problems in the scaffolding sector, and that is leading to unsafe situations,’ FNV union official Willem Dijkhuizen told the Telegraaf.