7 November 2007
Following last week's iron and steel national inspection campaign, the
labour department in KwaZulu-Natal is to embark on an initiative aimed at
training 50 union representatives by the end of November 2007 on health and
safety issues across the province.
The training will cover different aspects of the Occupational Health and
Safety Act and prepare unions with the knowledge on how to develop a plan of
action to implement health and safety measures in the workplace. This will also
include drawing up a framework for a health and safety agreement between both
workers and employers.
This comes in response to a formal request from the National Union of
Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), a recognised trade union in the iron and
steel sector that has an estimated 35 000 members in the KwaZulu-Natal region.
The union which has shown a keen interest in health and safety issues in the
province has requested the department to train 30 shop-stewards, 17 organisers
and three officials at this stage.
The union joined forces with labour inspectors in the province last week
when a whopping 655 employers in the iron and steel sector were inspected for
occupational health and safety compliance. Out of the workplaces visited, an
alarming 489 employers, 75 percent, were found not to be complying with the
law. A total of 418 contravention notices, 23 improvement notices and 13
prohibition notices were served on non-compliant employers. It was also found
that 94 incidents were reported to the department by employers from those that
were inspected.
Follow up inspections will be conducted in all instances where notices have
been served and if there is still non-compliance, there will be no hesitation
from inspectors to recommend prosecution.
During the five day blitz inspection campaign that took place country-wide
last week, Department of Labour Minister, Membathisi Mdladlana, stressed the
importance of workers playing a proactive role in ensuring their own workplace
safety.
"Safety is the responsibility of everyone. Every year we spend billions of
rands compensating injured workers through the Compensation Fund for accidents
that could have been easily avoided," he said.
"When injuries rise, production gets negatively affected causing profits to
go down, which then results in jobs getting lost," he said.
Enquiries:
Zolisa Sigabi
Cell: 082 906 3878
E-mail: zolisa.sigabi@labour.gov.za
Issued by: Department of Labour
7 November 2007
Source: Department of Labour (http://www.labour.gov.za)
