An NGO, Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA) have called for the integration of safety procedures in workplace across the country through proactive measures to ensure the safety of lives and property.
The Nigeria Regional President, OSHA UK, Dr Olusegun Aderemi, made the call at the 11th International Safety Conference on Thursday in Abuja with the theme: “Integrating Safety in the Workplace through proactive measures”.
Aderemi, who identified safety as number one in all aspect of life, urged the Government to embrace safety in workplaces to ensure job satisfaction and better performance from employees.
The president, who noted that a lot of people deliberately ignored safety rules and regulations over time, however, said that adhering to those rules would minimise casualties, monetary losses and deaths.
He advised everybody to adhere to safety rules and regulations in order to live happily and healthy.
He noted that proactive safety measure was what everyone needed at home and workplace as well as all spheres of life to ensure better living.
According to him, safety procedures have been neglected in the past thereby leading to number of deaths, loss of property and huge amount of money wasted instead of preventing such calamities.
“Safety is something we all need, in fact the measures we are talking about are things we already know and we tend to deliberately neglect them and giving room to all the fatalities that may eventually lead to deaths”
“As result a lot of organisations spent huge amount of money. Therefore, when you put in place proactive measures in safety it means that you prevent it before it happens doing that you are saving a lot lives, money and property”
“The government, work places, those at the locality and the legislators should make sure we are all safe by doing the right thing. We are creating this safety and sanity as champions of safety by moving it to different places to make sure everybody does that which is right.”
Aderemi assured that OSHA UK was concerned about saving lives and having zero tolerance for negligence and non-adherence to safety rules and regulations. He noted that the organisation used the medium to create a lot of awareness for people to know that safety “is number one’’.
Also, Hon. Ibrahim Hamza, House Committee on Safety Standards and Regulations, National Assembly while reacting said that NASS was working assiduously to institutionalise occupational and health safety.
According to him, part of the efforts was the bill on Occupational and Health Safety and the bill has passed through second reading at the NASS.
“We are aware that there has been a lot of negligence on our occupational health and safety. It is high time we seat up to bring the issue of occupational health and safety to the front burner. The legislature and executive are working tirelessly to see that we effectively put this in place and make sure that further preventive measures are being taking.”
Mr Christopher Onyibo, the Chairman, Conference Planning Committee noted that OSHA as a non-profit organisation has progressively demonstrated consistent growth in promoting and advancing occupational safety and health awareness in all sectors of the economy.
Onyibo said the conference outcome was to understand safety management using innovations and proactive strategies, reviewing techniques and tools for safety data collection, analysis and sharing, learning of emerging technologies to enhance safety management, analysing safety proactive measures in the workplace; the initiative to improve individual team and organisational safety, identifying organisational features of proactive safety culture and network with likeminded sector professionals from various sectors.
Participants at the event were top government officials, environmental health officers, and health and safety practitioners among others.