This morning's explosion at a construction site on Auckland's wharf which injured five people requires a full investigation to stop events like this happening in the future, said CTU President Richard Wagstaff.

"Every New Zealander deserves to know they will be safe at work. Sadly, our construction sector has a terrible record of workers being killed or injured on the job. 11 workers were killed in construction just last year. 4,800 workers in construction had an injury requiring more than a week away from work.

“Clearly on this occasion the health and safety system operating at this workplace has not kept workers safe and needs to be put right as quickly as possible.

"Today's explosion could very well have proved fatal so we are very lucky that no one was killed.

"It's important there be a full and detailed investigation into how this happened and steps are taken to better protect workers.

"The construction industry is a substantial and significant employer, and it's very important that people who work in this sector are kept safe.

"Worksafe must act swiftly to get to the bottom of what has gone wrong," said Richard Wagstaff.

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