It's a sad day for National OHS Service - Ministry of Labour

Where is the Chief Health and Safety Inspector or Permanent Secretary (PS)?

Part of his/her responsibilities is to see proper implementation of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1996 and its regulation. What happened to the workers who conducted the renovations? I hope they were equipped with proper standard personal protective equipment.

Were the asbestos dust contained at Civic Centre or did they take it with them via public transport and have their clothes laundry at home by innocent family members?

Now the ministry is working on the Safe Removal Procedure, and training of workers in handling hazardous material such as asbestos embedded material. What a reactive approach. Someone is sleeping on the job.

The only qualified asbestos personnel in Government now is PS Defence, Osea Cawaru. I hope he will make a statement soon to calm the situation and panic from public.

With asbestos dust, you can't smell it, you can't taste it or see it. It's very tiny and once you inhale the asbestos dust it stays in your lungs forever unless one undergoes surgery. It will not show symptoms soon but will take five, 10 to 15 years to fully develop depending on a person's health status.

Someone needs to be taken to task. Chief Health and Safety inspector - you need to empower your new inspectors.

Send them on specialised training so they can be very creative and be bold to go out and identify old statutory buildings or government buildings before any renovation. The Suva City Council civic centre renovation has been known for the past three to four years. Your office has been next to it. Why wasn't a team formed to discuss the renovations timeline and identification of material and how will they contain the nuisance dust?

Perhaps through that process you will be the first (rather than a non-government organisation) to identify the material.

What happened to the proactive approach from Occupational Hygiene Unit? Is it no more? Hope this will be a big lesson for the department.

Asbestos dust causes a few types of cancer. You can look it up on Google search. Right now, I am concerned about the workers who conduct the removal prior to the stop work order given. Period. Enough said.

I wish to add another dimension to what Spencer Nigel Robinson wrote on need for a good education and importance of a "knowledge based society" (FS 01/06/17).

If education is the panacea for all our ills then why malpractices of fraud, misappropriation and the likes are on the rise?

In a book 'Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination' by Dick Riley, John Wells, and Mary-Jo Kranacher, the authors observed that "as employees' education levels rise, so did the losses from their frauds".

This was a result of a study taken in the framework of a highly developed nation. One can be highly intelligent but not doing what is right, just and fair.

I am not denigrating education per se but I think getting an education is not just about wisdom and knowledge.

Since Mr Robinson has a belief system grounded in “Holy Scriptures” then wisdom would not be a matter of mind, but a matter of morality. Thus training a child (Proverbs 22:6) has to be founded on absolutes and strong morals, first.