THE new Occupational Safety and Health Act signed into law by President Mnangagwa comes at the right time as more new mines, factories and other businesses open and existing businesses expand.
Already, workplace injuries become inevitable, largely as a result of economic growth.
The stress on mining, mineral processing and heavy industry also creates workplaces with more dangers, and that requires better precautions.
We also need to incorporate modern safety standards into the sector of small businesses as these are rapidly formalised.
Safety measures do not have to be expensive, but do have to be effective. In many cases they are applied common sense.
But all employers, from the tiny concern with a couple of family members to the giant mines and factories with thousands on the payroll have to have both the foresight to work out what might go wrong and the knowledge to figure out effective ways of coping that do not endanger those producing the value.
This is largely the core of the new Act, which retains the old worker compensation funds under the National Social Security Authority and the best of the older practices, while updating and consolidating the law so it includes what we have learnt over the decades in Zimbabwe and incorporates best international standards.
Major new employers, investors opening new mines or factories, almost always have in-house experts and these days the mine or factory safety officer is considered an important member of the team.
The safety regulations issued under the old and new enabling Acts are regularly updated and provide the minimum level of protection, dealing with things like types and access to fire extinguishers, first aid training and other practical matters.
Where the new Act improves matters is making the best practice, of high levels of safety consciousness and training in every establishment among both managers and workforces, universal.
You can go into any well-run mine or factory and almost instantly see the level of this consciousness.
Besides the safety posters, which may be ignored, you find the workforce, the supervisors and the managers are careful and safety equipment is installed, screens are fixed to machinery to prevent unauthorised or casual access, and everyone jumps on the person about to risk their life and the lives of others by doing something wrong or daft.
But you also find people taking shortcuts, using the wrong tools for a job, not even following simple rules like wearing very cheap safety goggles when grinding metal, and operating machinery without wondering what will happen if something breaks or comes off.
So a stronger enforcement is needed. No one likes inspectors, but they are necessary. In a well-run establishment an inspection is likely to be more of a seminar between experts, both sides learning from the other.
Indeed, a good inspector can learn about dangers and how to overcome them of less familiar or new technologies by seeing them in action under expert controls.
Best practices can be passed along.
Then there will be businesses that require to upgrade. Here the inspector, at least on the first visit, can lay down the minimum standards and point out obvious dangers that must be fixed, promptly.
But the inspector also has to push the business to become safety conscious, helping to create that culture where accidents are rare because everyone automatically takes care.
That safety consciousness does not cost anything, except effort by everyone concerned. Many businesses in the informal sector need to develop that consciousness.
Dangers like sloppily-wired plugs, or loose wires snaking along the ground, inflammable oils and other liquids kept near heaters cost nothing to fix. But fixing them can eliminate a lot of risk.
Zimbabwe is moving towards high levels of industrialisation and processing of raw materials, and the policies include the full range of businesses, from tiny micro enterprises to giant manufacturing plants and mines.
But with the right attitudes, educated common sense and following a modicum of simple rules we can develop fast without injuring or killing people in the pursuit of value.
