You & Your Mates’ Safety is Paramount
BRUCE MCCLURE, General Manager of the CMPA discusses the importance of safety at work to ensure that everyone leaves their working day without injury.
SAFETY on any work site is paramount. It is about ensuring that everyone who works on any site whether it be a quarry, a factory, a farm or an offi ce no matter where and or at what time of day, at the end of their working day everyone leaves without injury without stress caused by potentially serious incidents that occurred at that site.
In Victoria, we have in place a system where the extractive industry sites are checked regularly by an inspector from WorkSafe for compliance with all regulations that govern the health and safety of all personal on a work site. For many of these quarries an improvement notice may be issued by the inspector due to some aspect on site not being quite up to the regulations or a prohibition notice stopping the practice or indeed the operations on the site until the practice has been rectified or the equipment involved fi xed to meet the requirements.
The table below provided by WorkSafe shows the details on the visits to extractive industry sites by Inspectors from 1 July 2007 to 31 May 2011.
The figures in the table show that between this period of time there has been a 155% increase in primary visits to extractive industry sites around Victoria. What these figures do highlight is that on average every extractive industry site could be visited at least once every two years. While in reality visits to most sites are not that frequent, it would not take the department a lot of resources to actually increase the visit frequency.
The figures in the table also show that for 2010-2011 52% of the primary visits have resulted in improvement notices but only 4% of visits have resulted in prohibition notices being issued. Whilst, improvement notice numbers have deceased from the previous two years, the prohibition notice numbers have increased.
The disturbing statistic is that prohibition notices have increased by 50% over 2010-2011. Even though the overall numbers are low the fact that there has been a 50% increase in prohibition numbers is a warning to many in the extractive industry.
What the figures above do highlight is that all quarry personal need to be constantly vigilant and ensure that they are meeting the requirements set out in the relevant regulations. Attention to safety does not just happen. It is an attitude, an awareness towards ensuring that every site is as safe as we can possibly make it.
We need to ensure that all of us go home at the end of each working day safe and sound.
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