Safety Week |15 November 2023

Yesterday’s session in progress

Safety officers enhance their knowledge on occupational health and safety

The Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has organised a two-day occupational safety and health workshop for safety officers from different industries  including tourism and construction, among others.

The workshop from November 13 to 14 took place at the STC conference room. Yesterday’s session consisted of a presentation led by Peneyambeko Munkawa, ILO’s occupational safety and health specialists, who highlighted that ILO identifies ‘work safety and health’ as one of the people’s

fundamental principles and their rights at work.

“For an employer to be able to fulfill the obligations of the ILO standard perspective and maintain a safety working area there is the need to know what safety entails, the risks and hazards and how it can be achieved and that is the purpose of my presentation,” she said.

Her presentation focused on four main topics namely risk assessment, accident investigation, workplace policy and occupational safety and health and lastly implementation of occupational safety and health management systems.

Stephanie Boniface, the director for labour monitoring and compliance in the employment department, said the workshop was one of the activities to commemorate this year’s Safety Week, at the request of the safety officers themselves.

“The ministry has organised these quarterly forums since January of this year for the safety officers to address different topics in relation to health and safety in the workplace and this will help them deliver their activities and duties more efficiently,” she noted.

One of the participants, Hillary Albert, the sustainability coordinator at Constance Ephelia resort, described the presentation as very helpful and informative as it identified the different safety hazards in a workplace and how to go about reducing and eliminating these risks. “I find the information being shared in the forum to go further in depth and this in turn allows for better understanding of the term health and safety in a workplace.”

She added that preventing the risk of an accident, especially in the tourism industry, depends on the way the area is maintained and added that at her workplace, they hold monthly or weekly inspections with different departments.

“This is to ensure the workers’ security, which goes hand in hand with our open door policy for all staff grievances or concerns,” she concluded.

Today’s Safety Week activity is an interactive tour on a construction site in Roche Caiman for safety officers and other employers from the construction industry.

Diane Larame

Photo by Louis Toussaint