Indian Health and Safety Legislation: Safety Officer Requirement.

Image
Industrial Health and Safety blogs. What are the Indian Health and Safety Legislation Requirement for  "Safety Officer"  in different states? Ans: Section 40-B. Safety Officers According to The Factories Act 1948 In every factory :- wherein  one thousand(1000) or more workers are ordinarily employed , or wherein, in the  opinion of the State Government , any manufacturing process or operation is carried on, which  process or operation involves any risk of bodily injury ,  poisoning or disease or any other hazard to health, to the person employed in the factory , the occupier shall, if so required by the State Government by notification in Official Gazette, employ such number of Safety Officers as may be specified in that notification. UTTAR PRADESH FACTORY RULES 1950 and Uttar Pradesh Factories (Safety Officers) Rules, 1984 THE TAMILNADU FACTORIES RULES, 1950, The Tamil Nadu Safety Officers (Duties, Qualifications and Condi
84 comments

Who should do the accident investigation?How many people should do the accident investigation?


Accident investigation is an essential element of health and safety. It requires to be done in correct manner so as to fulfill the purpose (Root cause elimination, accident prevention etc). Ideally accident investigation to be done by the person who is familiar with the process of the organization. It means if an accident happened in a petroleum storage then most suitable person to do accident investigation is anyone expert from petroleum processing. Also in combination to a process expert, it is desirable that same person should be expert in accident causation, part of accident investigation team previously.


However such type of expert is very rare and not easily available. So below are the recommendations for “Who should do the accident investigation” in such cases where above mentioned experts are not available:


Joint team formation for accident investigation. This team should includes one person from management who is aware about the accident involved process, person, location, current scenario of the organization. Similarly one person from non management (labor) should also be part of the accident investigation team. This non management person should be close to the accident workplace wherever possible. This will serve two purposes; first it promotes worker participation, second it removes fear from the mind of the other co workers who can be of great importance as an evidence provider. Now health and safety professional should also be part of accident investigation team. This will help others in accident causation, focus on all aspects like unsafe conditions, unsafe acts, equipment failure etc. To show visible leadership one person from top management should accompany the accident investigation team. Visible leadership is a key to any accident investigation. Due to involvement of any person from top management, a clear indication or message reflects that management is not going to hide any facts. Also any person who is popular in terms of his respect among workers, management then he should also be part of accident investigation team.

Immediate supervisor should also be a part of accident investigation team. This provides advantages like process aware; workplace conditions aware, person’s familiar with him, hidden facts can be unfold, better tuning with the accident concerned people etc. Also if immediate supervisor is in accident investigation team then he ultimately understands the importance of safe practices, knew the whole accident investigation method and then he may be familiar with accident causes. Sometimes it has been seen that immediate supervisor try to hide the facts so as to cover his shortcomings. This thing should be taken care of while doing accident investigation.


So it seems team of 5-6 people is enough to carry out any accident investigation.

Now to eliminate chances of biasness, team should focus on facts finding not fault finding. Explore correct methodologies to do accident investigation. Maximum time it has been seen that accident causes were written as carelessness, individual faults etc. These should be taken care of while doing accident investigation.


Thanks for your time. Please like my page safety solutions. Subscribe my blog safetysolutionorgin.

Regards
Surya.


I am a Health and Safety professional writing blogs related to Industrial Health and Safety. I am qualified from Regional labor institute India and International Diploma from NEBOSH.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What are the reasons for managing Health and Safety?

Image
Equally important three reasons are behind managing health and safety at workplace. These are as below: 1  -         Moral, 2  -        Financial and 3  -       Legal reasons Moral reasons: Every individual has right to work in safe workplace while performing his assigned task. He comes to a workplace in happy mode and expects to return in a same manner. Same time individual has a duty to follow all health and safety norms so as to save him as well as prevent injury to others by his acts. Here come two things “Duty of Care” and “Negligent act”. Duty of care is an obligation to exercise a level of care towards an individual that is reasonable in all circumstances to avoid injury to that individual and to his belongings. Negligent act is not intentionally but careless act which results into loss. Only Negligent act is regarded as a breach of “duty of care”. Liability for “duty of care” depends on policy of that area. Different countries have differen
Read more

What is the difference between Health and Safety Audit and Inspection?

Image
Safety inspection is a structured process generally carried out at workplace for hazard identification like planned inspection in an organization. It is followed by checklist or non checklist method , Multidisciplinary team based approach, on scheduled intervals, compliance review and further action planning. It helps in identifying potential hazards at the workplace and mitigation of same in time bounded manner. Safety audit means verifying the effectiveness of Health and Safety management system in an organization. It measures actual implementation of Health and safety standard against the standard. It is also followed by standard Health and safety management system .i.e OHSAS 18001 etc, multidisciplinary team based, periodic, compliance review and feedback loop for further decision making by top management. It helps in identification of potential gaps in health and safety management system of the organization.
Read more

What is Violation? What are the types of violation? Mention few examples of types of violations?

Image
What is Violation? What are the types of violation? Mention few examples of types of violations? Violation defined as willful act which is against the rules, norms, standard etc. done by individual worker to complete the task like maintenance, inspection, driving etc. Sometimes these type of violation lead to incident at workplace. Individual involved in the violation injured himself and sometime his act injured others. Violations usually done to complete the task assigned to worker in convenient manner. Maximum time violation done to complete the productivity task . Violations found very common among those who are local residents to the plant premises in comparison to those who are living far from the plant premises. Also violation done by workers as they are not aware of the consequence and they are unaware about the benefits of doing job safely. Violation can be reduced considerably by the way of imparting awareness about health and safety significance, sharing about the con
Read more

What is Safety culture and what are the methods to improve safety culture at workplace?

Image
What is Safety culture and what are the methods to improve safety culture at workplace? Safety culture  is the attitude, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees adhere, perform or reflect in relation to  safety  in the workplace.  Safety culture  is an integral part of organizational culture. In nut shell it is a way of life for every employee at workplace. In case way of life is positive it is termed as positive safety culture and in case it is negative it is termed as Negative health and safety culture. This can be easily judge by way an employee work at workplace.  Examples given below can be judgmental in analyzing Safety culture at workplace: 1-      An employee working with all Personal protective equipments required for the job, following all SOP’s for the job, doing the work which is for he is authorized, commencing the job after appropriate tool box talk following hazard identification risk assessment of the job. His immediate superior, tea
Read more

What is accident? What are the benefits of Accident investigation? What are the common errors we do post accident? Is accident investigation an active monitoring or reactive monitoring?

Image
What is accident? What are the benefits of Accident investigation? What are the common errors we do post accident?  Is accident investigation an active monitoring or reactive monitoring? Unexpected and undesired event lead to injury or illness to an individual is an accident. An event that results into injury or ill health (Provided in HSG245). At workplace while performing task by an individual either due to his own unsafe act or by others or due to existed unsafe condition undesired outcome is an accident. Also energy from the process equipment like conveyor belts, pulleys, vessels etc. flows in wrong direction and interacts with human (workplace worker etc) results into accident and ultimately injury. Post accident errors done by organisation : -           Forget to report or hide the accident leads to probability of recurrence. -           Manipulation of the site condition results into wrong judgment about the cause. -           Blame game initiation resul
Read more