To strictly handle violations of occupational safety and health

 "To strengthen assessment and management of occupational safety and health (OSH) risks, fire and explosion prevention at workplaces". That is the theme of the OSH Action Month in 2019. Binh Duong Newspaper's reporter made an interview with Le Minh Quoc Cuong, Director of Department of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs, about this issue.

 - Please tell us about the purpose and requirements of this year’s slogan?

- The main purpose of this year’s theme is through the assessment and management of OSH risks, apart from helping enterprises proactively prevent and control dangerous and harmful factors at workplace, also help employees are aware well for self-observance of regulations, processes and instructions on OSH, fire and explosion prevention for assigned jobs; supervise and inspect to prevent labor accidents, occupational diseases and fire at the workplace.

For the above purpose, the main requirement of this theme is to encourage enterprises and production establishments to carry out  specific programs and measures to improve working conditions; strengthen self-inspection and checks on OSH regulations, procedures, improve assessment and analysis skills for dangerous and harmful factors, OSH and fire risks in the workplace, contributing to ensuring labor safety, reducing and preventing labor accidents and occupational diseases, strengthening safety culture at work.

Workers respond to Action Month on occupational safety and health 2019.

- In recent years, Binh Duong has done a good job of OSH but the number of occupational accidents, fire and occupational diseases was still high, causing serious damages to people and properties, affecting directly production development. So what was the cause, sir?

- In recent years, in addition to the achieved results, OSH had difficulties and limitations due to the following reasons:

Some enterprises still faced many difficulties in production and business, or inadequate employers and employees’ awareness of OSH, leading to shortcomings in implementation, violations of standards, OSH regulations, fire prevention and fighting, labor conditions, which were not been improved well.

OSH staff at all levels was thin; business management mechanism is currently changing in a diverse and unstable manner, making it difficult for labor safety and hygiene works in enterprises. Due to limitations in personnel, technical equipment as well as operating costs, the state management in OSH has not been fully effective, especially the number of inspections was too small compared to the number of businesses in the area.

In general, workers’ awareness of OSH was heightened. Workers have been more active in requesting and using personal protective equipment, participating in OSH training sessions organized by enterprises, promptly discovering and proposing solutions to their enterprise when discovering OSH risks; collaborating with employers to fully implement OSH contents at enterprises. However, there were still many workers, who did not have high discipline in OSH work, did not complied with safety regulations, safety rules, instructions for operating machines ... leading to many serious consequences.

- In fact, some businesses, especially small and medium enterprises have not really paid enough attention to the guidance, training and protective equipment needed to limit labor accidents. How will these businesses be handled?

- Currently, the handling of administrative violations in OSH field is mainly applied in accordance with Decree No. 95/2013/ND-CP dated 22 Aug 2013 and Decree No. 88/2015/ND-CP dated 7 Oct 2015. In addition to administrative sanctions according to decrees, functional agencies force violating enterprises to implement remedial measures as prescribed. Meanwhile, inspection documents always set specific time limit for units and enterprises to make remedy and report results to the inspection team. After this time, based on the reported results, state management agencies will continue the re-examination the implementation of units and enterprises in order to further improve the effectiveness of inspection and the sense of compliance with labor laws at enterprises.

- So with this year's theme, what is provincial leadership’s directive to strengthen management to ensure OSH in the future?

- With the theme of this year, to strengthen the management and assurance of OSH in the coming time, the province will organize and perform the following contents: Enhancing the dissemination of new documents guiding the implementation of OSH Law for enterprises and workers to ensure OSH, policies and regimes for people suffering from labor accidents, occupational diseases...

To renew and diversify information and propagation activities on labor safety and hygiene, fire and explosion prevention on mass media (newspapers, radio and television, Internet), boosting propagation to radio stations of districts, towns and city... To direct and effectively implement the National Program on OSH in period 2016-2020 approved by the Prime Minister to prevent labor accidents, occupational disease, and improve working conditions for workers.

Strengthening inspection and examination of OSH, fire and explosion prevention, regularly advising and urging enterprises and production establishments to strictly implement labor safety hygiene procedures and measures, preventing fire and explosion to inhibit occupational accidents, at the same time strictly dealing with violations of labor law, safety and fire prevention...

- Thank you Sir!

Reported by T.Ly, T.Vy – Translated by Ngoc Huynh