Maltese company’s safety initiative adopted in EU

An initiative promoting work-related health lifestyles launched by a Maltese company is now being promoted as an example of good practice in other EU member states.

This was after it won a competition launched by the European health and safety agency, Health Minister Joe Cassar told Parliament on Monday. He did not name the company.

Dr Cassar was winding up the debate on the Occupational Health and Safety Authority’s financial estimates for 2012 amounting to more than €850,000. Over €272,000 were being spent on operations.

The authority was commissioned by the EC to evaluate the organisation of the health and safety inspectorate in Latvia.

The minister also announced that the OHSA was acting on research carried out under an EU-funded-research project and was tackling serious problems which might endanger worker safety in different sectors, mainly in the construction and manufacturing industries. The project included interviews with 1,600 workers and 1,200 employers. It also identified sectors where little training was given to workers and where monitoring was poor.

He said that more than €33 million were lost last year because of industrial accidents. This did not include civil damages. Research also showed that a number of work-related accidents were not reported to the authorities. However, the number of injuries dropped by 1,000 over the last five years, while deaths fell from eight to one.

Dr Cassar said Eurostat reported that Malta achieved the second largest drop in industrial accidents amongst EU countries. Last year, the number of patients using the occupational therapy unit were 400 less than the previous year.

OHSA inspectors paid active visits to more than 2,000 places of work in the public and private sector.

Dr Cassar said more than 15,000 inspections were conducted over the last 10 years with 1,000 employers fined more than €400,000. The Authority had instituted 200 court cases in the last 10 months, with 90 cases already decided. The courts imposed fines amounting to €66,358 and gave two suspended sentences.

He criticised the opposition for not being in touch with events claiming that three out of the proposals made by Labour spokesman Anġlu Farrugia were already being implemented.

OHSA had also begun preparations for evaluating work related stress as this was an emerging risk. He slammed the social partners for failing to take initiatives to address this problem as they were supposed to do under the European framework.

Earlier, Dr Farrugia said that the government was stifling the authority in human and financial resources and reducing it to an establishment that relied on building up its funding through fines for non-enforcement of health and safety regulations.

According to its own estimates, the authority would need 17 per cent more funding than what the government was allocating. This meant it would not be doing any recruiting, with resultant questions about its effectiveness.

What culture was it to continue emphasising fines as a source of revenue? No occupational psychologist had yet been recruited after three years.

The Labour deputy leader listed seven proposals with a view to making the OHSA more meaningful and effective in its sphere of work. They included greater care of workers facing difficult situations at work, some of whom could feel suicidal, through a rapid-response team of professional psychologists, social workers and counselors.

There should be greater coordination with other government entities such as the ETC, the National Employment Authority and Mepa. The guidelines of some of these entities were anachronistic and actually put workers in danger.

The OHSA must be more proactive with systematic research and a strong knowledge base for analysis of scientific data to come up with better policies. It should look more closely at working conditions, especially the shameful conditions of almost 2,500 people engaged in precarious work.

Dr Farrugia said it should not be enough for employers to hire their own health and safety officers, provide their workers with the right equipment and give them regular drills, unless they enforced them. The social partners in the MCESD must be involved in this process, with wider representation on the council to stop it being a closed shop.

Dr Farrugia said the authority was offering training courses as a means of revenue, proof that its budget was not enough. The government’s only investment in the authority was in terms of managerial posts, leaving it with only six people inspecting on sites.

Was the OHSA represented in Gozo? How and where could one have recourse to it? Did it have statistics of industrial accidents?

One of the authority’s main shortcomings was its lack of direct function in work-related transport accidents. Was the authority investigating such accidents at work or was it relinquishing their handling to police and wardens?

According to the EU, Malta had one of the highest rates of incidence of MRSA. What resources were available to protect hospital workers? Could the minister confirm if there were any cases of Legionnaire’s disease? What inspections had the OHSA carried out in the hospital’s level two, where fire-hazardous material was stored?