In terms of regulation 10 of the General Provisions of the Health and Safety at Workplaces Regulations, employers have the duty to carry out a suitable, sufficient and systematic assessment of the occupational health and safety hazards and resultant risks at the workplace.
Risk assessment is considered to be a key element for successful health and safety management.
Micro and small enterprises present special challenges in achieving healthier and safer workplaces.
Restricted time and resources are frequently highlighted as a barrier to adopting a proactive approach to health and safety management.
Moreover, such enterprises may experience difficulty in complying with occupational health and safety legislation and tend to underestimate the risks posed by their workplaces.
In view of such barriers, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) has developed a simple tool to facilitate the process of risk assessment. This tool is known as OiRA.
Though OiRA was mainly developed to assist small and micro-enterprises, it can be used by anyone interested in identifying and assessing the risks that may be present at the workplace.
Through the use of OiRA, one can also formulate an action plan through which the risks must be addressed.
The action plan will be tailored to the requirements of the particular enterprise, thereby providing a specific and practical approach.
Recognising the effectiveness of such tools, the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA), in collaboration with the EU-OSHA, has developed a risk assessment tool which can be used for work in an office setting.
In order to facilitate its use, the tool has been developed in Maltese. Furthermore, the process and development of control measures are based on Maltese health and safety legislation.
To this end, the OHSA, in collaboration with the EU-OSHA, will be organising a half-day seminar on the use of OiRA on Wednesday at Le Méridien St Julian’s Hotel.
Registrations are to be made by sending an e-mail to Kim Micallef Agius on ohsa.communications@gov.mt.