3000 work site accidents leaves over 100 dead annually in Sri Lanka — Prof. Seneviratne

By Steve A. Morrell

There are approximately seven million persons in the workforce in Sri Lanka. This includes employment in the non-formal sector as well, said keynote speaker Prof. Rohini de Alwis Seneviratne, at the Conference on National Occupational Safety & Health, recently.

The unskilled section of this workforce also included domestic workers who are not monitored for work site hazards, she noted.

Labor Minister Gamini Lokuge was the chief guest.

Safety culture has not had formal attention and, hitherto although a monitoring mechanism is not in place, work site accidents are now placed at about 3000 each year. Additionally, work related deaths too have recorded alarming figures indicating over 100 annually, she said.

Data is not available to determine the severity of the problem, but what was indicated was that work-related crisis should receive urgent official attention for closer controls, Prof. Seneviratne said.

She said in the absence of an unmonitored situation what is already known may perhaps be just the tip of the iceberg. Sketchy information available could be classified hearsay, but rather than procrastinate on hypothetical uncertainties it was now time serious consideration be attributed to this aspect of commercial enterprise and put in place effective mechanism to thwart work site accidents.

Senior Programme Officer, International Labour Organisation (ILO), Shafinaz Hassendeen, brought to bear gender issues. She said there was now the incidence of women joining the workforce and their participation was rising. Attached to this aspect of employment the ILO leads the necessity for Decent Work. Stressing its importance she said action was necessary now, rather than shelve the problem for some undefined date in future.

She said there were about 37 million work related accidents each year, reported world-wide. Of this figure, about 2 million die; which could have been avoided.

Based on these disturbing figures, ILO placed high priority on solutions looking for long-term goals to ensure frequency of accidents do not occur, the ILO put in place some guidelines

Prof. Senevirathne said increase of hypertension and diabetes, including virtual avalanche exposure to junk food was also causing undue stress factors in work sites and although not specifically identified was reason for alarm.

Attorney-at – law, Dittha de Alwis from the Employers’ Federation, said both employers and employees had dual responsibility to ensure safety in work sites. Although he did not specify what these responsibilities were, he alluded to the workman’s compensation act and such being a compensatory mechanism for redress. It was still not quite certain there were safety elements incorporated in each work site that could be applicable.

The factories ordinance of 1942 was amended but whatever amendments were enacted was far from adequate and not within context for modern demands for safety standards.

Minister of Labour Gamini Lokuge said there were applicable priorities placed within labour requirements that employers had to subscribe to. He said although there were instances that such were flouted, it was also of note that the formal commercial sector had placed such strictures on their own and such was being adhered to. Work site accidents were relatively minimized in those worksites.

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