New drive to lift workplace safety
BUSINESSES in Dandenong are being urged to make workplace safety a priority this year.
The warning from WorkSafe Victoria comes after 25 people died on the job in Victoria in 2011, including the death of a 52-year-old Melbourne Water lab technician in Bangholme last month.
The Endeavour Hills man died after he fell from a walkway into a sewage tank at the Eastern Treatment Plant while taking routine samples.
Melbourne Water general manager of operations Tony Antoniou said the company was assisting a WorkSafe investigation, as well as conducting a safety risk assessment of walkways at its sites.
“We remain absolutely committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure a safe working environment for everyone we work with,” he said.
WorkSafe executive director of health and safety Ian Forsyth said the workers who were injured were often doing routine jobs.
“WorkSafe inspectors and investigators are often told, ‘He was experienced and always careful’ or that ‘We’ve been doing it that way for years and never had any problems before’,” Mr Forsyth said.
“Safety is about understanding what can happen and doing all you can to ensure people are trained, supervised and have what is needed to work safely, even if they’ve done a job a thousand times before.”
Mr Forsyth said employers and workers needed to share the responsibility for a safe workplace.
“For some, challenging the practices and habits of your working life can be hard, but if something goes wrong, the consequences are often immediate, horrific, long-lasting or fatal.
“The fact that so many people died in the last few weeks of last year shows that while you can be doing well, constant vigilance is needed as the situation can change quickly.”
Greater Dandnong Weekly 16 Jan by Daniel Tran
