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Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE recorded 49 deaths and 3 614 injuries due to work-related accidents since January, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche has said.
Minister Goche told a national conference on safety and health at work in Harare last week that the figures reflected a decrease compared to the same period last year, but the statistics remained a cause for concern.
Over the same period last year the country had registered 63 workplace deaths and 3 218 serious work-related injuries.
“These statistics are a cause for concern and must be significantly lowered. This calls for a process to properly profile and analyse incidents that cause these injuries and fatalities, if we are to arrest this undesirable trend.
“There is an urgent need to redouble our efforts to realise zero harm, zero accidents and ultimately zero deaths in our workplaces,” Minister Goche said.
He acknowledged the importance of the Safety and Health at Work conference in ensuring the safety and health of Zimbabwe’s labour force. He said this year’s conference was taking place at a time when there was heightened need to undertake labour reforms.
He said the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare was working on finalising the Occupational, Safety and Health Bill, which, once enacted into law, should significantly and positively influence the course of occupational safety and health at the workplace in Zimbabwe.
Minister Goche said Government expected to see a positive change in attitudes and perceptions on safety and health in the country, adding that his ministry was also close to completing of a long overdue new national occupational safety and health policy.
“We need an occupational safety and health policy that is proactive and not reactive. The policy must also be able to keep pace with the dynamic world of safety and health,’ said Minister Goche.
He said his ministry was working on benchmarking Zimbabwean laws with international best practice. It was exploring opportunities for the ratification of International Labour Organisation Convention 187: The Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health.
“We will accelerate this process because of its objective to preserve the health of our workforce,” the minister said.
The policy measures would go far in fighting the scourge of occupational accidents and diseases, adding “safety begins with all of us here”, before officially declaring the conference opened.
This year’s SHAW conference ran under the theme “Promoting a Preventive Culture for Occupational Accidents and Diseases”.
Welcoming delegates to the conference, NSSA general manager Mr James Matiza emphasised importance of a preventive culture in “taming the scourge of accidents and diseases at workplaces”.
“The question to pose to ourselves today is: ‘Do our organisations have a preventive culture with regard to accidents? We strive to see a preventive culture being upheld in industry,” he said.
Mr Matiza implored stakeholders to desist from the syndrome of business as usual in organisations saying there was need to have a paradigm shift from maximum production in factories to safe production. He also said that everyone should embrace a culture of zero tolerance to deaths and injuries in the workplace.
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