Capacity building of workers on safety need of the hour

All accidents at the workplace, big or small, are due to someone not following safety guidelines. Capacity building of workers on safety will not only reduce incidents but also improve the performance of the organisation.

Strict adherence to safety guidelines is the cornerstone to achieving the triple bottom line of People, Profits, and Planet, experts said at a one-day seminar on ‘Safety for Sustainable Development’ organised by CII Vizag chapter here on Friday.

“However minor an incident is, it takes time for the workers to regain confidence and bring back normalcy in production. Workers have a right to a workplace free of potential hazards and they have to be provided personal protective gear,” Chairman of CII Vizag chapter Neeraj Sarda said.

He urged Joint Chief Inspector of Factories D. Chandrasekhara Varma, who attended as chief guest, to take a proactive role in dissemination of safety guidelines. He suggested that the Factories Department played a major role in training of contractors and contract workers on safety issues.

Industries and establishments should focus on safety, right from the design level. There was a need for change in the attitude toward safety, Mr. Varma said.

“The law is clear that there can be no mishaps at the workplace. The factory inspector only enforces the law,” he added.

The community expects zero impact on their lives from industrial units in their vicinity. The international accreditation for safety standards is changing and ISO 45001 would come into effect from October 2016. These standards would help improve all the existing standards, he said.

A number of other experts and practitioners of safety in workplace participated in the workshop.

Predictive maintenance

With increasing deployment of technology in operations, the trend is towards smaller number of skilled teams managing larger factories and establishments.

“In this scenario, failure of any equipment could result in disruption in operations,” Gopi Bulusu of Sankhya Techologies, said speaking from the perspective of Industrial Internet.