Safety experts seek law to protect workers

Safety professionals have called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sign the 2015 Occupational Safety and Health bill into law.
According to them, the continued delay in assenting the bill into law has led to indifference in the attitude of employers towards safe working conditions and safety advocacy.

Speaking at the appreciation of service ceremony for former Director-General, Lagos State Safety Commission, Mrs. Odebunmi Dominga, the National Coordinator, Safety Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, Kadiri Samsudeen, said the new safety law has sanctions that should be meted out to errant employers.

He explained that the Factory Act 1990 was obsolete and no longer applicable to environmental and working conditions in 2015.
He said, “We are looking forward to having that law being put in place because it is part of the foundation of safety. We can use the law to expose a person who doesn’t want to comply with the standards especially in industries. They capitalise on the law that we are using now, which is outdated.
“The Factory Act 1990 is no longer applicable because we are in 2015. With the new law on safety, we are waiting for its practical application so that it will move safety forward. And people will know that there are sanctions for violation of safety laws.”
While highlighting the role of safety advocacy, Executive Director, Safety Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, Dapo Omolade, said it would help people correct unsafe practices and introduce safety behaviours.
According to him, the increasing spate of accidents in recent times is caused by the absence of safety law to support the advocacy.

He said, “Until somebody knows what to do, he or she cannot do the right thing. The challenge in Nigeria is not that we don’t value lives; the fact is that a lot of people do things they don’t know. Safety is not about going to the university, it is about learning safety systems. We all work at an at-risk behaviour and when that happens, incidents will increase. We can see that it is increasing but we have so much to be done.
“If we go out there and start making noise about it in our advocacy and there are no laws or legislative powers that will compel people to do the right things, what we will say to people will not be meaningful to them.”

According to the Director, Safety Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, Jamiu Badmus, “In terms of occupational health and safety, we have a lot of records that are very poor. Over 1000 fire incidents occurred in Lagos this year.

We saw that we are reactive to health and safety in Nigeria and we are coming up with a lot of advocacy programmes that will make us proactive. Because when you are proactive to safety, accidents will be reduced to the barest minimum.”

Speaking in the same vein, the Vice Chairman, Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria, Lagos State branch, Mrs. Monica Nwosu, explained that safety is the absence of anything that has the potential of causing harm in the workplace.
In her response, Dominga explained that the commission under her leadership set safety standards, evaluated the safety standards and ensured they were at par with international best practices.