By Dr Moses Amweelo
WINDHOEK – The Labour Act, in recognition of the importance of health, safety and welfare of employees in the workplace, contains provisions designed to maintain and improve work environment related standards for all.
It establishes, inter alia, the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare as the umbrella organization for all matters concerning occupational safety and health. Occupational safety and health is an area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. The goals of occupational safety and health programmes include fostering a safe and healthy work environment and it may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, and many others who might be affected by the workplace environment. Occupational safety and health can be important for moral, legal, and financial reasons. It may involve interactions among many subject areas, including occupational medicine, occupational hygiene, public health, safety engineering, industrial engineering, chemistry, health physics, industrial and organizational psychology, ergonomics and occupational health psychology. Since 1950, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have shared a common definition of occupational health. It was adopted by the Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its first session in 1950 and revised at its twelfth session in 1995. The definition reads: Occupational health should aim at the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities; and to summarize, the adaptation of work to employees and of each employee to his/her job.
The main focus in occupational health is on three different objectives:
(i) the maintenance and promotion of workers’ health and working capacity
(ii) (ii) the improvement of the working environment and work to become conducive to safety and health and
(iii) development of work organizations and working cultures in a direction, which supports health and safety at work and in doing so also promotes a positive social climate and smooth operation and may enhance productivity of the undertakings.
Occupational safety and health is not a one man’s business, it is everybody’s business and all organisations have a duty to care and to ensure that employees and any other person who may be affected by a companies’ undertaking remains safe at all times. According to the Labour Act any group of employees of ten or more have the right to elect one employee as their workplace safety representative. The role of the safety representatives is primarily to liaise with other staff to identify health and safety issues and convey these to management. The workers’ safety representatives are entitled to carry out inspections as well. This includes both regular inspections, investigations of accident, dangerous occurrences and other surveys of working conditions at the workplace. In addition, he or she may carry out his or her own investigations of the working environment, including any article, substance, plant machinery or safety and health equipment at the workplace and these inspections should be carried out monthly at all places where employees are represented. However, the employer and the workplace safety representative may agree or an inspector may direct that the inspections should be conducted at a greater or shorter intervals. Where an employee brings a complaint to the workplace safety representative, he or she is entitled to investigate the situation, make proposals for a solution, represent and assist the employee, speak to the employer or an independent expert etc. This allows the workplace safety representative to make representations based on inspections, investigations of complaints as well as any other aspect of safety and health at the workplace. In order to perform these functions adequately the workplace safety representatives should receive appropriate training in occupational safety and health during working hours without loss of income. They should have access and opportunity to familiarize themselves with laws and regulations relating to occupational safety and health. The workplace safety representatives can also communicate with the safety committee, factory inspector, the trade union in the industry and other persons related to occupational safety and health. Finally, in order to carry out inspections effectively at workplace, the safety representatives should have access to adequate facilities such as, for example, access to consult independent experts and possibilities to bring in such experts on site for any purpose, including training. The possibility to bring in union advisers on health, safety and welfare; access to facilities such as an office with a desk, a filing cabinet and bookcase, a telephone other equipment for administrative duties, space for private consultations with members and storage of information; access to photocopying, postage and internal mail facilities within the workplace; notice boards of adequate number and location, as well as meeting facilities. The Labour Act gives workplace safety representatives the right to perform these functions without being dismissed or penalized for that reason. If the workplace safety representative is dismissed or penalized for exercising these rights, this is considered unfair practice and can be challenged in the Labour Court.
Dr. Moses Amweelo is a veteran Swapo Party Member of Parliament (MP), who is also the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on ICT.