A brief discourse on Occupational safety

( I may stop political bloggings but i shall talk more on socio economic issues, since to some die hard fanatics that I do not qualify to speak on the shortcomings of the present govenrment. Today, I shall talk about an area which I have some expertise and which I may be as good as anyone in the country at least where theory is concerned.)

There is a branch of medicine that is called occupational medicine, which treats occupational diseases, a big term for workplace illnesses and accidents. It has evolved to include prevention of accidents and occupational diseases, and adoption of safety measures and procedures to reduce the risk of workplace diseases and accidents. It has thus evolved to covered what is now known as Occupational Safety and Health (OSH).

A simple example is ‘low backache’ due to a sitting in a badly designed chair. So for clerical staff and typists and receptionists, they need to be provided with ergonomically designed chairs to prevent low backache. In fact, low backache among office workers are very common , and in most cases, are due to badly designed chairs which encourage bad postures and slouching.

Central to occupational safety is what we called “hazards”.Hazards are things with potential of causing sickness and accidents. For example, a pot hole in the ground is a hazard, for anyone walking or riding a bike over the pot hole may end up in a nasty fall and sustain injuries.

So to safety specialists , the main theme is to remove hazards wherever it is possible.

In the example of a pot hole, the hazard can be removed by repairing the pothole. But at times, the hazard may not be easily removed. For example, the pothole cannot be repaired in time for certain reasons, the hazard can be replaced by a lesser hazard, for example putting a tong in front of the pothole so that people would not walk directly into it. By itself, a tong in the walkway or a drive is also hazardous, but since it is more visible, it can be used temporarily to reduce the risk of a more serious hazard, that is the pothole.

Some times a hazard cannot be removed. Night driving is a form of hazard since night is the time when our body needs sleep and rest, apart from decreased visibility. Since this is the type of hazrd that cannot be removed, we need to formulate procedures to reduce the potential of accidents during night driving. Procedures such as ensuring the vehicles have sufficient lights to illuminate the roads, procedures on checking the braking systems, procedures ensuring that all seats belts are being fastened before the vehicle can be given the nod to move.

There must be procedures to ensure that the driver is healthy at that time of driving ( not just at that time of medical checkup which is required by law once a year only). If the driver reports that he is not well, there must be replacement for him. There must also be procedures that the driver has sufficient sleep. If the driver has not enough sleep, he should be replaced.

Then there must be procedures that after certain minutes of driving, the driver needs to stop over to rest. Some times just to stop to break the monotonousness of driving. Lets face it. All jobs, in the eyes of occupational speicialists, are repetitive and all repetitive jobs will become monotonous.

Once a job becomes monotonous, the risk of accidents increased ten folds, since monotony leads to boredom and boredom leads to sleepiness or decrease in alertness and reaction time.

The same safety procedures are adopted by airlines for their pilots. For those of you who have followed National Geographic channel’s ‘air crash investigation’, there were a few instances where investigators found that pilot errors were the cause of air crashes, and in most of these instances, pilot fatigue leading to judgement errors were  the causes.

Looking at the Malaysian scenerio, most companies do not have any occupational safety measures or procedures. The onus is on the company management to provide such measures or procedures.

In the case of  bus drivers or drivers of other public service vehicles such as taxis, they do go for the once a year medical examination. But passing the medical examination does not guarantee the health of the driver involved. He may be healthy and alert at the time of medical examination, but he may suffer from lack of sleep a week later which leads to decrease in alertness and hence increases the risk of accidents.

So it is not enough just to send drivers for a yearly medical check up. The company must adopt a policy of ensuring the safety of their passengers and workers, and once the safety policy is spelt out, there must be program to implement the policy; program such as safety procedures which everyone must adhere to.

So there must be procedures to ensure that the drivers have enough rest between trips. There must a procedure to educate the driver to report any lack of sleep and sleepiness.. Driver fatigue is the main cause of bus acccidents. The drivers must also report any unusual sounds coming from the vehicles .

But companies would not take the initiatives to put in safety program and safety procedures. The onus is for the government to legislate laws and rules to enforce them to adopt such safety procedures. And laws must be enforced for them to be effective. There must be adequate surveillance to ensure that all laws and safety procedures are adhered to.

Besides that, litigation from the victims of accidents (or victims’ families) will serve as a motivation for the companies to adopt safety procedures. If each accident victim sues the bus company and driver for negligence after an accident caused by lack of such safety procedures, the companies will learn the hard way to adopt and implement such procedures.

SO victims in workplaces, get a lawyer to sue and you will help to prevent the occurrence of accidents in future.

( The writer is writing on occupation safety , a subject which he has some expertise  and hopefully more employers will realise the importance of adopting safety measures for their staff…It is actually more cost effective to have a safe workplace,including vehicles, since with accident payouts and increase insurance premium, it would be cheaper to provide staff with safety measures, as in Australia and other western countries where every business with more than 15 staff must have occupational safety policy and program to implement safety procedures. On top of cost, the most important thing is of course human lives, once lost cannot be replaced).

next i shall talk about the US flight 253 where safety procedures were breached at Amterdam airport, one of the airports with the best security procedures..