The collapse of a factory under construction, killing 6 people and injuring many others in Vinh Long province on the afternoon of March 15, once again shows that labor safety in construction has not really been given due attention.
Few high-altitude window cleaners are fully protected – Photo: T.T.D.
According to statistics, from 2016 to 2018, the number of deaths due to occupational accidents was more than 2,200 people. This may be an incomplete number. Many fatal occupational accidents are “icebergs” that businesses deliberately conceal. In fact, from the units, statistics on the number of labor accidents decrease each year, but the number of labor accidents with a high number of casualties increases and occurs at a more serious level.
What to do to be safer?
Many cases have been investigated and the causes clarified. There are serious and deadly cases that have been severely punished and even prosecuted for business leaders and those involved. But this is still rare.
The rest are still only handled for administrative violations in the form of fines and requests to overcome consequences by compensating victims’ relatives…
Therefore, businesses neglect or even disregard labor protection and ensure safety in construction and production.
Entering factories, construction sites…, many people’s eyes are still met with the slogans “Safe to produce, production must be safe”, or “Safety first”, “Safety”. is the happiness of each person and each family”…
Sometimes this slogan is made into a logo by the business and printed on clothes and helmets.
But what have we done to be safer? This question, unfortunately, is still unclear from reality.
Every year, businesses still make labor protection plans and plans to ensure labor safety in construction. Enterprises periodically conduct labor safety training and coaching for workers. , workers according to regulations.
But the training is more or less formal, the program content is truncated, heavy on theory and more worrying is the lack of close supervision of safety stages and workers (even engineers). ) still lacks awareness of safety and is subjective to dangers.
This is a factor that leads to many casualties from completely avoidable reasons.
Flirting with small things…
I came into contact with workers working in Japanese businesses. There, everyone understands safety knowledge and strictly follows safety principles, anytime, anywhere.
There, safety in production labor is not just an empty slogan but a criterion for all actions in production activities.
For them, safety is not only for each worker and their family, but also a value and prestige to create a brand for Japanese businesses, for society, and for the country.
There, to ensure safety, in addition to human consciousness and behavior, businesses focus on investing in machinery and equipment, technical methods, advanced technology… to reduce risks. for workers.
There, business owners have worthy incentives for initiatives that benefit the business as well as offer solutions and plans to minimize the risk of labor insecurity. At the same time, they are also willing to strongly discipline and even fire those who are subjective, violate labor safety or cause accidents to others.
The work of ensuring labor safety in many businesses today often goes against processes.
Instead of investing in accident prevention costs, they use the costs to find ways to shirk responsibility and compensation to shift responsibility to the workers, due to objective factors.
In many cases, the fact that an enterprise compensates employees’ relatives with money after a serious accident is considered to have fulfilled its responsibility and resolved the consequences…
This is where we indulge each other, turning small mistakes into sloppy thinking and working practices, disregarding safety discipline at work, disregarding the health and lives of ourselves and our colleagues.
For peace every day
To prevent and minimize the consequences of tragic and heartbreaking labor accidents, we need stricter legal regulations and resolute prosecution of labor accidents that cause serious consequences and death. Many people are subjective in their production work.
We hope that businesses, instead of installing safety signs like they have been doing for a long time, should start doing specific things to make construction sites and factories safer every day.
Reduce tragic accidents, increase happiness for every worker, every day going to work is a peaceful day.
