REPORT
What Others Say About Health , Safety and Environment
By Samniang Saenram
The long-awaited amendments to the Occupational Safety and Health ( Amendment ) Act 2022 ( OSHA ) were gazetted on March 16 , 2022 and are expected to be enforced in 2023 .
With this amendment , employers will be mandated to conduct Hazard Identification , Risk Assessment and Risk Control as an effective way to mitigate workplace mishaps and injury to employees .
The Ministry of Human Resources informed that a total of 21,534 occupational injury cases were recorded throughout Malaysia in 2021 , with 301 fatalities . This makes the 2021 occupational injury rate in Malaysia to be 1.43 per thousand workers , which is a 34 % decrease compared to 2020 . Similarly , the fatal occupational injury rate for the year decreased by 4 %, totalling 2 per 100,000 workers compared to 2.09 in the previous year .
This is a welcomed sign and with the new preventive provisions in the amended Act , Malaysia should be on track to achieve the goal of safe working places .
Health , Safety , and Environment ( HSE ) are critical aspects of engineering and industrial operations . Engineers play a crucial role in ensuring the well-being of people , protecting the environment , and complying with regulations . For this , engineers have the added role of educating and training employees about health and safety practices , ensuring that everyone is aware of the risks and knows how to protect themselves .
Connected with their daily engineering work , engineers also need to reduce the environmental impact of projects . This includes designing processes that minimise emissions , waste , and resource consumption .
Fundamental Principles of Occupational Health And Safety ( International Labour Organisation )
Occupational safety and health ( OSH ) is generally defined as the science of the anticipation , recognition , evaluation and control of hazards arising in or from the workplace that could impair the health and well-being of workers , taking into account the possible impact on the surrounding communities and the general environment . This domain is necessarily vast , encompassing a large number of disciplines and numerous workplace and environmental hazards . A wide range of structures , skills , knowledge and analytical capacities are needed to co-ordinate and implement all of the “ building blocks ” that make up national OSH systems so that protection is extended to both workers and the environment .
The scope of occupational safety and health has evolved gradually and continuously in response to social , political , technological and economic changes . In recent years , the globalisation of the world ’ s economies and its repercussions have been perceived as the greatest force for change in the world of work , and consequently in the scope of occupational safety and health , in both positive and negative ways . Liberalisation of world trade , rapid technological progress , significant developments in transport and communication , shifting patterns of employment , changes in work organisation practices , the different employment patterns of men and women , and the size , structure and life cycles of enterprises and of new technologies can all generate new types and patterns of hazards , exposures and risks . Demographic changes and
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