NTUC's statement on the New Workplace Health and Safety Act Bill
17 October 2005
Workers, who work to earn a living, have a right to and deserve safe and healthy workplaces. The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) has always been advocating for safe and healthy work practices at workplaces. We have long been pushing for changes to the legislative framework to better enhance the safety and health protection of our workers at workplaces.
2 Though the tripartite social partners have made progress in this aspect, as seen in the general decline in the number of overall industrial accidents over the past decade, we are shocked by the series of fatal accidents that happened one after another in the last one year. It appeared that existing mandatory safety and health procedures had been treated lightly by some errant employers.
3 The introduction of the new Workplace Health and Safety Act by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in the Parliament today is timely. NTUC welcomes the new framework set out in the Act, which will ensure that all stakeholders play an active role in creating a safer and healthier work environment for our workers.
4 While everyone in the workplace has an active role to play in ensuring safety, I would like to remind employers, especially the top management, that they must take the lead in creating a safe work environment for their workers and themselves. Ensuring safety at workplaces is about showing respect to human lives – a basic obligation that all employers must fulfill. Shortcuts must never be taken at the expense of human safety and health. The proposed Act will set out more clearly the liabilities on employers or risk creators should they fail to put in place and adhere to safety precautionary measures. We strongly believe that penalties for non-compliance to safety and health standards be augmented to clearly reflect the total costs when accidents happen and the poor safety management of errant employers.
5 We look forward to the effecting of the new Act as the current Factories Act covers only about a third of the total work force. We are very glad that with the new Act, the scope of the Occupational Health and Safety legislation is extended to provide protection to more workers at workplaces including non-industrial ones, such as offices, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, and laboratories.
6 While the legislation is being revised, it is perhaps also timely for MOM to review the safety training framework, to ensure that workers have full knowledge of the various hazards at work. All workers should be equipped with skills to identify work processes or environment that are hazardous to their safety and health. They should be empowered to stop work or request for relevant expertise to remove or eliminate the hazards of work, before starting or resuming work.
7 The labour movement will continue to give full support to the tripartite partners in their efforts towards ensuring safety at the workplace.
Yeo Guat Kwang
Director for Quality Worklife
National Trades Union Congress
