Malaysia safety culture should be inculcate

As said by the minister najibtunrazak Malaysia workforce needs to change its culture at the workplace and embrace international occupational safety and health (OSH) standards in moving forward. He encourage the workforce to work safely in all aspect as of safety cannot be played by only one individual which is the Safety Officer. To ensure a safe work practice the workers should be exposed with the hazard that might and could become an injury or fatality. He said statistics revealed that rapidly industrializing 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 like Japan, Canada and Australia were, however, much lower at 3 cases per 100,000 workers. We as safety personnel should give training, advice and clearance in ensuring a safe work environment to minimize the danger at the work place.

As of for the increasement of foreign workers in Malaysia the safety officer have to make sure giving them training in preventing accidents to happen and teaching them ways in controlling the accident if no one in charged is around (worse case scenario).

Back in the early 90’s the SOCSO statistics recorded we have decrease in accident numbers of workplace related accidents from 121,593 cases to a 60percent drop up to date. Said by najibtunrazak this is a highly countable achievement and is even more if we take into account the substantial increase in the workforce over time.

Safety officer or safety supervisor must make sure that they will record any unwanted event or near miss at the workplace. This is so that we can manage to control the hazard from happening to the worker and to educate workers on the importance of workplace safety and make them realize that safety must be priority and not neglected in any ways. And safety officers should lead by example and ensuring others to follow him in maintaining a safe workplace for people to work.

BY (MOHAMAD AFIQ BIN MOHAMAD FUAD) B13(A)