Safety in focus
The annual remembrance service for workers killed, maimed or made ill at work has benefited from the rejuvenation project taking place at Memorial Park.
The annual remembrance service for workers killed, maimed or made ill at work has benefited from the rejuvenation project taking place at Palmerston North’s Memorial Park.
A sign installed by the Palmerston North City Council was unveiled at the Fitzroy St entrance to the park yesterday by Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-galloway, who is MP for Palmerston North, and the city’s mayor Grant Smith.
Outlining the history of the park, the illustrated storyboard next to the memorial to dead and injured workers and their families also tells the story of George Evans, who died in 1904, aged 55, while at work on the site when it was a gravel pit.
It also reveals other injurycausing industrial accidents in the Terrace End shingle quarry that led to the introduction of workplace safety measures.
Lees-galloway told the lunchtime gathering of 50, which included city councillors and union representatives and members, that the Government’s draft Health and Safety at Work Strategy showed workplace safety wasn’t all rosy.
‘‘We need to improve our safety record, so that when people go off to work, they can expect to come home to their families,’’ he said.
‘‘We are a long way behind countries with which we compare ourselves’’.
Lees-galloway said Ma¯ ori were over-represented in workplaceaccident statistics and unions had an important part to play in reinforcing workplace safety.
Smith said Palmerston North aspired to having a reputation as a safe city.
The city was committed to promoting a healthy and safe environment for the people who lived, worked, played and studied in the city.
‘‘We aim to be more accountable than what is required by law.’’
Getting that safety message across to the city’s younger population, however, would prove challenging. ‘‘Construction is the second most dangerous industry in New Zealand and we are experiencing a construction boom at the moment,’’ Smith said.
Captain Stu Lee, from the Salvation Army, once worked in the electricity industry and remembered losing a workmate who was crushed by a large cable drum, and another who suffered severe burns after being accidentally electrocuted.
At the end of the half-hour service, members of the gathering placed small pieces of West Coast coal on the cairn as tokens of respect and remembrance for those who had lost their lives at work, including the Pike River 29.