Self-checks over safety and health rules mulled

Star: PUTRAJAYA: The Human Resources Ministry is working on a self-regulatory system for companies to hold professionals responsible for failing to comply with safety and health regulations.
Its minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam said a similar system was implemented in various countries including Canada where professionals could lose their licences for failing to comply with the regulations.
The idea, he said, was mooted after seeing the ministry’s inspection teams’ heavy task when conducting about 147,000 checks annually on worker safety and health measures.
“We are now looking at the system used overseas as well as our needs here and we will also need to seek amendments to the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994,” he told reporters after launching the World Occupational Safety and Health Day 2009 celebrations here yesterday.
Dr Subramaniam, who also launched a booklet on Smart Guide to Occupational Safety and Health, said the booklet would help stop employers from claiming ignorance when they were reprimanded for failing to comply with regulations.
Copies of the booklet, he said, would be given to new business operators when they go to the Registrar of Companies or commercial banks where they got their loans.
On the current level of compliance in the various industries, Subramaniam said it was generally good with only about 4% of employers taken to court for gross failure to follow regulations.
He said the industrial accident rate in Malaysia was almost the same as that in developed countries.
Dr Subramaniam said the ministry was working with the Education Ministry to incorporate occupational safety and health topics in the existing school syllabus to instill safety awareness at an early age.