Employers expected to report every accident
SIBU: The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health ( Niosh) chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye calls for more efforts to ensure employers report every accident and near misses.
“Although the awareness level on OSH has increased, more should be done to ensure employers report each accident and near miss as required under Section 51 of Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1994 and Regulation 13 of the Occupational Safety and Health ( Notification of Accident, Dangerous Occurrence, Occupational Poisoning and Occupational Disease) Regulations 2004,” he said when commenting on OSH awareness.
Lee cautioned that the penalties for conviction is a fine not exceeding RM10,000 or a maximum of one year’s jail or both.
He noted that studies indicate that industrial accident cases were under reported and would affect the effectiveness of government’s medium and long-term plans to tackle the problem.
There was a huge gap between the statistics released by Department of Occupational Safety and Health ( Dosh) and Social Security Organisation (Socso) on accidents in the construction industry and this may indicate that such cases were under reported.
“Based on a study made by researchers from USM and UKM, the difference between the accidents reported to the two agencies was 97.49 per cent.”
The study entitled ‘ Malaysian Construction Industry: Trends of Occupational Accidents from 2006 to 2015’ was published in the latest Journal of Occupational Safety and Health 2016. On average the number of accidents reported to Socso was 10 times higher than reported to Dosh every year.
Socso’s interim report showed a 6 per cent increase in number of accidents involving workers last year when 66,618 cases were reported compared with 62,837 cases in 2015.
The number of accidents
Although the awareness level on OSH has increased, more should be done to ensure employers report each accident and near miss as required under Section 51 of Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1994 and Regulation 13 of the Occupational Safety and Health (Notification of Accident, Dangerous Occurrence, Occupational Poisoning and Occupational Disease) Regulations 2004. Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, Niosh chairman
reported to Socso were 59,897 in 2011; 61,552 cases in 2012; 63,557 cases in 2013 and 63,331 cases in 2014.
“Based on Socso’s statistics, 35,304 of the total cases reported last year were industrial accidents while the remaining 31,314 cases were commuting accidents.
“Compared with 2015, the number of industrial accidents and commuting accidents last year had also increased by three per cent and 10 per cent respectively.
“The industrial accident rate per 1,000 workers had slightly increased to 2.88 last year compared with 2.81 in 2015. In 2006, the rate was 4.77 accidents per 1,000 workers,” Lee said.