Justice Minister Livni appoints experts in various fields to make recommendations to government regarding compensation for IAEC center workers diagnosed with malignant diseases
Aviel Magnezi
Published: 04.07.13,
The class-action suit on behalf of the Dimona nuclear reactor employees against the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) has led to the establishment of a public committee.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni appointed Thursday a public committee, headed by Supreme Court Deputy President Judge Eliezer Rivlin, whose role is to make recommendations to the government regarding a special agreement to recompense the IAEC center workers who contracted malignant diseases.
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Recommendations will be submitted within a year of work and the due date is set for mid-2014.
The committee was established in order to propose a model that will be used in the future to assess individual appeals for workers who contracted malignant diseases.
Aside from Chairman Rivlin, the members of the committee are: Ben Gurion University President Professor Rivka Carmi; Professor Ariel Porat, the former head of the Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law; Dr. Nir Peled, an expert on internal medicine and thoracic oncology and the head of the Research and Detection Unit for Thoracic malignancies at the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, Finance Ministry Accountant-General Michal Abadi-Boiangiu and Deputy Attorney General Avi Licht.
An announcement said that “over the years, the IAEC has put a great emphasis upon the prevention of illness and safety of its workers. Surveys conducted regarding malignant diseases have proven that the morbidity rate among its workers is not higher than the morbidity rate amongst Israel’s Jewish population.
“With that, over the past years, court proceedings have been held in law suits by employees who worked at the IAEC. The suits are still in legal proceedings and it was recently clarified that their management will involve unique and sensitive issues which touch upon the State’s vital interests.”
The IAEC general manager, who wants to prevent discussing these issues publicly, advised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former ministers Dan Meridor and Yaakov Ne’eman, to formulate an alternative model for recompensing the employees who contracted malignant diseases – even in cases that it is not necessarily provable that there is an environmental, legal connection between the exposure and the illness.
“This is a voluntary arrangement that will provide the employees and their families with an additional and alternative route for receiving damages that will apply to those who prefer a special and speedy process as opposed to legal proceedings.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4364954,00.html