HEALTH & SAFETY IN FOCUS
Gov legislation and
COPs in the spotlight
Doug Potter
What is a COP? If you’ve never
worked on a mine, a COP is
a Code of Practice. Codes of
Practice complement health and
safety laws and provide detailed
information and practical
guidance on how to comply
with legal obligations and
ensure employee safety.
In the past, the government
left it to the companies
themselves to manage their own
health and safety programmes.
The feeling was that the mining
houses needed a little assistance,
so the Department of Mineral
Resources (DMR) put together
minimum standards for each
mining house to ensure that
there is uniformity across
the board when it comes to
legislation for each mining topic.
Today, there are COPs on
fatigue, safety, hours of work,
trackless mobile machinery
(TMMs), minimum standards
of fitness and many more. Each
of these Codes of Practice have
been put in place to help make
the workplace, and therefore
the employee, safer.
As a consultant in the industry
it has always puzzled me how
the mines and their employees
perceive legislation. When you
are on a mine and they hear that
the DMR is coming you see extra
personnel cleaning, safety workers
doing last minute inspections
and everyone moving faster in
response to fear like springbok
running from a lion.
The old view is that the DMR
is put on earth to close mines
down or to punish them,
but smarter employees and
mine managers know that the
department is there to make
mines safer and to keep them
open, not shut them down.
On a mine I was visiting in
the Northern Cape in 2014 I
saw a mine manager tell his
employees we do nothing
different when we have visitors
from any inspection group.
He then preceded to explain
this mine is your home. We
keep our home clean and safe
everyday just like this mine and
if we are only cleaning we our
home / mine when guests come
over then we are not doing
things properly.
I believe government
legislation is meant to keep us
safe, like speed limits on the
roads, and that mine manager
hit the nail on the head. We
don’t slow down on the mine
and speed up as we hit the
gate. We follow the rules and
legislation and we are a better
society for it. ■
What’s going on with all these Codes of Practice
(COPs) coming up?
Dr Doug Potter is the director of Fatigue Education at Predictive Safety.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Doug Potter is the director of Fatigue Education for
Predictive Safety, a fatigue and wellness company that focuses
on the shift work patterns of 24/7 industries such as mining,
manufacturing and trucking. He has worked with multiple
major mining houses on their fatigue management COPs and
programmes.
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