Mark Gauci, CEO, Occupational Health and Safety Authority
The term ‘accident’ can be defined as an unplanned event, condition or occurrence, arising in the course of work that results in, or has the potential to result in, an injury, illness, damage or fatality. Whereas the key word in this definition is ‘unplanned’, accident investigations also show that most are preventable.
This is not to say that there will ever come a time when the number of accidents will be zero. Accidents are the result of a decision by a person, taken deliberately or unintentionally, on whether to intervene or not, or to follow or not, the requirements of the law. These decisions may be taken on the spur of the moment, without giving due consideration to the possible consequences.
OHSA has recently, and very emphatically, stressed that the primary responsibility for ensuring health and safety in the workplace lies with those who create risks. As a matter of fact, occupational health and safety regulations impose various duties on clients, employers, self-employed persons, project supervisors and workers.
The same law assigns a large number of functions to OHSA, which include the dissemination of information, the provision of guidance, the development of the required legislative framework, and seeking compliance by whosoever has such duty. This is achieved through a monitoring system, which sees OHS officers visit different workplaces to ensure that the required preventive and protective systems are in place. When these are not, OHS officers are empowered to take action.
Apart from stopping work activities which place workers in situations of uncontrolled risks, OHSA also issues administrative fines or commences judicial action according to the level of risk identified. During 2018, OHSA issued a total of 591 fines (for a total of €205,400) and initiated 206 court cases against defaulting duty holders.
Analysing statistical data regarding accidents, and trying to identify trends over time, one can see that fatality rates have decreased from around nine per 100,000 employees in 2003 (there were 12 fatalities at work that year) to 0.45 fatalities in 2017 (the rate for 2018 cannot be worked out since the average number of gainfully occupied persons throughout the year is still not quantified). Injury rates have decreased from around 4,000 at the start of OHSA operations to around 1,440 injuries per 100,000 employees.
These figures reflect the progress which has been achieved, through OHSA’s endeavours. There remains room for improvement, but especially, there remains a huge scope for participation and engagement by other stakeholders, including the social partners. OHSA cannot, and should not, be the only stakeholder taking meaningful action, and if further progress is to be achieved, there needs to be a more concerted effort by every party interested in the right of workers to enjoy safe, healthy and decent work.
Karl Gouder, Nationalist Party spokesman on employment and industrial relations
One would accept the fact that accidents will always happen at work, however its exactly due to this premise that we have to make every effort to ensure that maximum effort is made so as to ensure maximum prevention.
Unfortunately, we witnessed a spike in accidents at the place of work these last months, some of them leading to the untimely death of workers. Every death is a tragedy. As a society, it is our duty to ensure that as much as is possible no accidents happen on the workplace. Whenever a tragedy happens, what we are witnessing is a public outcry that usually lasts for 24 hours and then everything goes back to normal as if nothing happened. This is totally unacceptable.
A laissez faire attitude that is slowly creeping in
As a society, we need to do two things to ensure that prevention is given its due importance.
First of all, we do have health and safety laws in place, however enforcement is practically non-existent. This laissez faire attitude that is slowly creeping in all aspects of our community should not be tolerated any more. As a society, we have to ensure that enforcement is given its due importance, and all laws must be enforced irrespective of who the contractor is.
Hefty fines should be given where contractors are deemed to have evaded health and safety rules, and let us make it quite clear here, it is the contractor/business owner who is responsible for health and safety. The worker should obviously do his part and ensure that he/she abides to all health and safety rules, however someone must be responsible for this, and this someone is the contractor/owner.
The second thing is the learning curve. When a tragedy happens, we need to learn from each and every one of them. It is true that investigations are carried out, however not much is coming out of these investigations. Apart from investigating to understand the cause and maybe identify the culprit of each tragedy we need to see what needs to be done so as to ensure that something like that never happens again. We need to have a system, a bit like air crash investigations, where concrete action is taken after each and every tragedy. Wwe need to ensure that systems are changed, rules are amended and careful action is taken so as to ensure that such things don’t happen again.
At the end of the day we need to work so as to change the mentality that anything goes and that corners could be cut so as to save on costs, every life is important and as a society we need to feel the responsibility of each and every life.
Martin Cauchi Inglott, MEP Candidate, Democratic Party
On November 26, a young Libyan worker fell to his death while working on a plank suspended over a seven-storey drop. In the immediate aftermath, between the magisterial inquiries, and online social debate, the last thing one would have expected was another three serious, construction-related accidents occurring in a period of less than a month. This is a clear indicator that there is something seriously wrong with the way we work.
Let’s be frank, accidents will always happen, but as individuals we have both moral and legal obligations to do our utmost to prevent them.
Yet in the first half of 2018, we registered an increase of almost four per cent in the number of non-fatal work-related accidents. Out of 1,653 reported accidents, 15.4 per cent occurred in the manufacturing industry, 15.1 per cent in the construction industry, 13.7 per cent in the transport and storage sector and 12.3 per cent in the administrative and support service activities.
How many accidents occur on a day-to-day basis that we completely brush off?
Now these indices are just the tip of the iceberg, as the NSO bases its statistics on the number of benefit claim forms submitted. How many accidents occur on a day-to-day basis that we completely brush off and disregard? How many times have people been placed in situations where it was just pure luck that they weren’t seriously injured or killed and we keep on as if nothing occurred?
Unfortunately, the local saying “U ijja, mhux xorta,” roughly translated to “does it really matter”, is a complete contradiction to the basic principles of health and safety. Yes, it does matter. At the end of the day we are talking about protecting people and there is no reasonable justification for placing a person at risk if there are safer ways to do things.
Unless a collective effort is made to change this mentality, we will never reduce the number of accidents. Employers need to make a concentrated effort to ensure, not only that good safety practices are implemented, but also that they are rigorously followed, and not discarded when they become inconvenient or too expensive.
The government needs to ensure that the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) is given the necessary finances and tools so that the authority can function correctly. If this means that the OHSA can start imposing heftier fines and penalties to ensure employer compliance, then give them the ability to do so on the spot and not through summons at law courts.
Workers need to ensure that they work safely, and do not place others at risk through their actions.
One also notes that work-related stress is on the increase and this is undermining the well-being of all employees, to a degree that there is an upsurge of work related mental disorders.
Finally, each one of us has a moral obligation not to encourage poor health and safety practices. If we start refusing to buy products, or accepts services, from companies with poor health andsSafety records, while making it known to them that they are losing business specifically because of this, there is a good chance that they will eventually start taking health and safety more seriously. At the end of the day, we all want to work in a safe manner, and it’s unfair to expect others not too.
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This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece