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The death of three persons in separate accidents this week has dramatically brought to the forefront the issue of national health and safety.
Admittedly, only one of last Wednesday’s three fatalities – that of a 56-year-old Enemalta employee, who succumbed to injuries after falling from a ladder – appears to have been directly related to workplace health and safety issues. But this week also saw a potentially devastating explosion at a Kirkop gas plant on Monday, which would surely have had far more serious consequences, had the explosion occurred at a time other than the workers’ official lunch break.
Incidents of this kind are fast becoming a cause for national concern, not just because lives are needlessly being endangered, and sometimes lost, but also because these accidents appear to be occurring more frequently, despite numerous initiatives aimed precisely at reducing them.
One such initiative was the setting up in 2001 of the Occupational Health and Safety Authority. Naturally it would be unfair to all the blame at the authority’s door, but then again, a number of questions do need to be asked. Among them: are there sufficient safety inspectors patrolling places of work? Do such inspections take place on a pro-active basis, or are they only being called into a place of work following an injury or fatality? In a nutshell, are we being merely responsive when accidents occur, or are there serious prevention strategies in place?
Another aspect is whether there is enough information regarding employers’ and employees’ rights, duties and obligations under the new reality that is EU membership. Needless to add, complying with European regulations carries a price tag, which many employers short-sightedly consider too high a price to pay. Apart from penalising such companies when caught cutting corners, government might wish to also consider offering incentives in the form of tax concessions related to reaching EU safety standards. After all, joining Europe was originally intended to bring about an upgrade in national standards… including national standards on health and safety.
But there is also a social dimension to this tragic reality. Interestingly enough, it was Dr Gonzi himself who pointed this out in a 2003 newspaper article: “The most worrying aspect is that accidents are largely happening to workers with low educational attainment levels… 53 per cent of accidents injured unskilled labourers with the 20-29 year old category registering the greatest frequency in accidents.”
Dr Gonzi was correct. There seems to be a social dimension to our high incidence of workplace fatalities: an unspoken, subconscious view that human life is apparently worth less among certain “lower” occupations. This view seems all the more relevant today, as victims of such workplace accidents so often turn out to be unidentified foreigners whose legal status is at best questionable. And with the increase in third country nationals as a result of irregular immigration, there is a very real danger that we may be unwittingly creating a new class of pariah: the illegally employed, “invisible” worker, whose wage – and life – is by definition “cheaper” that those of his legitimate colleagues.
And all too often, this attitude comes not from the employers, but from the workers themselves, who time and again prove only too willing to risk their own lives by refusing to comply with regulations, in spite of the obvious dangers.
What is therefore needed is a far-reaching cultural change, aimed at reinforcing the very values we so often pay lip service to: e.g., the sanctity of life, which for some reason appears to become a major issue only when dealing with babies in shoeboxes, but is almost universally ignored when young men fall to their deaths in entirely preventable workplace accidents.
Faced with such incidents, the worst reaction possible is to simply shrug one shoulders and be fatalistic, resorting to the superstitious attitude that such events are somehow “destined” to occur. They are not, and such attitudes serve only to devalue the very lives we should be trying to protect.
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