FEATURES- HEALTH AND SAFETY
Health and safety in a timber processing environment can be a challenge. Image: Pixabay
Safe and sound
– worker health and safety
Nothing is more important to this industry than the health and safety of its workers.
By Kelly-Ann Prinsloo
Workplace health and safety can be a challenge. If you work in a processing factory, you probably work with large and complex machinery, or unusual environments. You might work on a conveyor line, for example, and experience time pressures and production deadlines, repetitive work movements, heavy lifting, and sharp tools( such as blades). A workplace injury can have a huge effect on your whole life. For people working in a processing factory, some of their body parts most often affected by injury are the hands, finger and thumbs. Wrist and shoulder injuries are also very common.
Keeping yourself safe, and doing your part to maintain the safety of the environment around you, is vitally important.
The Occupational Health and Safety Act requires employers to bring about and maintain, as far as reasonably practicable, a work environment that is safe and without risk to the health of the workers. This means that the employer must ensure that the workplace is free of hazardous substances, such as benzene, chlorine and micro-organisms, articles, equipment and processes that may cause injury, damage or disease. Where this is not possible, the employer must inform workers of these dangers, how they may be prevented, and how to work safely, and provide other protective measures for a safe workplace.
However, it is not expected of the employer to take sole responsibility for health and safety. The act is based on the principle that dangers in the workplace must be addressed by communication and cooperation between the workers and the employer.
A BURDEN SHARED
The workers and the employer must share the responsibility for health and safety in the workplace. Both parties must pro-actively identify dangers and develop control measures to make the workplace safe.
Your employer has the main responsibility for health and safety at your workplace. Your employer must ensure that your factory is safe and will not damage your health or that of your co-workers. This means:
• Providing a safe workplace. This includes your physical work environment and the equipment and any chemicals you use, as well as the work methods and processes you use to do your job.
• Checking your workplace regularly for anything that may cause illness or injury, and fixing any problems as soon as possible.
• Providing you with the information, instruction, supervision and training you need to do your job safely.
• Talking with you, or talking to your elected employees’ safety representatives about health and safety issues.
52 FEB / MARCH 2017 //