Malaysian Workforce Needs To Inculcate OSH Culture

PETALING JAYA, Sept 12 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian workforce needs to change its culture at the workplace and embrace international occupational safety and health (OSH) standards in moving forward, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said Tuesday.
"The key determinant (for good OSH) is culture at the workplace and the management. It must start from the top, there must be that commitment by the management not only to make announcements but also to put in guidelines and day-to-day action that can save the lives of the workers.
"We have to strengthen the safety culture. It is there but it is not as strong as it should be," he told reporters after opening the 9th National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Conference on Occupational Safety and Health 2006, at the Sunway Convention Centre.
Earlier in his opening address, Najib said there was a need to enhance efforts to curb workplace accidents and this should be done collectively and immediately.
"Everyone should have the common goal of striving towards zero-accident in every workplace. Seeking improvement in occupational safety and health must be an ongoing task for everyone -- government, employees and all relevant parties," he added.
He said statistics revealed that rapidly industrialising countries reported high fatal accident rates at the workplace, and annually it was estimated that fatality rates for every 100,000 workers in countries like Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea were between 12 and 17 cases, while the figure for Malaysia stood at 12.
Accidents at the workplace in developed countries like Japan, Canada and Australia were, however, much lower at three fatalities per 100,000 workers.
"We can see a remarkable difference in the number of fatalities and occupational accidents between developed and developing countries. Many enterprises in developed countries are taking zero-accident as their goal.
"In developing countries, infrastructure construction and industrialisation bring new situations to surface. There are more challenges to overcome, new risks to eliminate and more hazards to be identified and dealt with," the Deputy Prime Minister said.
He said it was the government's hope that the frequency and severity of occupational diseases and fatal accidents in the country be reduced by up to 20 per cent by 2010.
He said the Social Security Organisation statistics showed that there was a significant reduction in the total number of workplace-related accidents.
"In over a period of 11 years, the number of reported industrial accidents had decreased from 121,593 cases in 1993 to 43,885 cases in 2005, denoting a 60 per cent drop.
"This is a highly commendable achievement and is even more if we take into account the substantial increase in the workforce over the same period."
However, Najib said, there was no room for complacency as last year alone the organisation paid out a total RM890 million in compensation for industrial accidents and occupational diseases and this figure was expected to keep increasing.
He said every year, it was estimated that 220,000 people would join the nation's labour force and currently, there were 1.8 million registered foreign workers in the country.
"Thus, we have more challenging tasks, which are, to prevent the occurrence of accidents and injuries in the workplace, to educate workers on the importance of workplace safety and to make them realise that safety must be priority," he added.
Najib said increased industrial growth and activities would consequently introduce new materials, processes and technology into the country's working environment which were bound to give rise to more and newer safety and health hazards in the working environment.