KUALA LUMPUR: Two out of three work-related deaths that occur daily in Malaysia are due to road accidents while commuting to or from work and this has become a major occupational safety and health concern, says the chairman of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye.
While industrial accidents had been on the decline in Malaysia, the number of commuting accidents increased by almost 40 per cent over the past six years to 24,809 accidents last year from 17,704 accidents in 2006, he told Bernama yesterday.
According to statistics from the Social Security Organisation (Socso), the overall accident rate at the work place has been significantly reduced by 37 per cent from 95,006 accidents in the year 2000 to 59,897 accidents in 2011 due to enhancement of occupational safety and health awareness and enforcement of laws and regulations over the past 10 years.
But Lee said he was alarmed by the high number of road fatalities in Malaysia involving workers commuting to and from work as the working world has changed dramatically as a result of globalisation, demographic changes, migration and evolving family structures.
“There are more than 6,000 fatalities every year for the last few years and that translates into 18 to 20 people killed every day. Motorcyclists and pillion riders make up about 60 per cent of the fatalities and most of them are young and in the prime of their lives,” he stressed.
Lee said the impact of commuting accidents was far greater than the industrial accidents as commuting accidents usually involved multiple injuries which were far more worse and traumatising when compared to workplace accidents.
The problems related to the rising number of commuting accidents were usually the lack of awareness among workers for safe riding and driving while commuting to work, lack of training programme targeted at preventing commuting accidents and lack of road safety elements similar to occupational safety and health management at workplaces.
Lee said that although many government departments and agencies were involved in road accident prevention programmes, there was no single authority to enforce the commuting accident prevention programmes and the government needed to look at this matter seriously.
He felt that serious action must be taken to develop programmes that encouraged a major attitudinal change towards safe driving among Malaysian motorists as a counterweight to reckless driving and lack of driving etiquette.
In this regard, he said driving schools should incorporate such attitudinal change into their syllabus while employers also have a moral obligation to adopt a proactive approach to managing road risks, which had a direct impact on their costs in terms of staff downtime, higher insurance premiums and poor public image.
Lee said NIOSH was also working on improving the training module for future safe motorcycle riding and defensive driving courses. — Bernama
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