Issued by the Ministry of Labour
25 May 2000
Ladies and gentlemen, and delegates at this exhibition, thank you for affording me this opportunity to address you.
I was pleased to see that the Noshcon 2000 publicity brochure refers to the need for us to give substance to our dreams for the 21st Century. It speaks of putting our vision into action, of seizing opportunities, confronting challenges and of making the future happen.
This is particularly apt in the arena of occupational health and safety, as it is within the labour market and the broader economic and social environment that we are seeking to transform, as a government and as a people.
Before I address you on the challenges of occupational health and safety, allow me to share with you the vision which guides us as we confront these challenges. The Department of Labour is striving for a labour market which is conducive to economic growth, investment and employment creation and is characterised by rising skills, equity, sound labour relations, respect for employment standards and worker rights.
As a result of the legislative programme and the strategic plan which my Department is busy implementing, we, together with our social partners, are well-positioned to achieve this vision in a number of areas such as in skills development, employment equity, labour relations, the protection of vulnerable workers and so on.
However, our collective efforts as labour market stakeholders in achieving this vision will be undermined without massive improvements in the occupational health and safety levels in every workplace and industrial sector across the economy.
The stark reality, ladies and gentlemen, is that the current situation is unacceptable.
As far back as 1976, the Erasmus Commission Report highlighted inefficiencies and deficiencies in OHS. These included inadequate OHS services and trained personnel, a lack of reliable data and notification of occupational illnesses and injuries and inadequate compensation.
While attempts have been made to address these inadequacies, while there have been achievements and progress, the truth is that not enough has been done. All stakeholders -government, employers and employees, and service providers - face the challenge of ensuring the effective and determined implementation of a comprehensive solution to these inadequacies.
Various tragedies which thrust themselves onto the national stage have served as painful reminders of why there is a need for dramatic intervention in addressing health and safety concerns in the workplace.
Incidents such as the Njaka bridge disaster in July 1998, which resulted in the deaths of 16 people, and more recently, the Durban night-club tragedy and the explosion at Scaw Metals in Germiston spring to mind. However, a myriad of incidents that are often hidden from the public eye continue to take place on a daily basis in our country's workplaces.
Our statistics over the past five years show that far too many workers are still dying, suffering injury, developing diseases and being maimed. Hundreds of people are killed and thousands injured each year.
But the statistics don't speak to the human impact on our people or tell the story of the pain and suffering of thousands of workers and their loved ones, the children deprived of parents and the families deprived of breadwinners.
As I have said, the situation is unacceptable, because one worker injured or killed at work is one too many. This is why the Department of Labour's vision for occupational health and safety in this millennium is one of zero tolerance towards occupational fatalities, injuries and diseases.
In addition to their direct human impact, OHS incidents also have direct and damaging economic consequences. They impact negatively on the bottom lines of individual enterprises and undermine the productivity, competitiveness and growth of our economy as a whole.
Incidents at work cost the country billions. Work days lost as a result of the absence of employees from work due to occupational accidents undermine the growth of our enterprises and our economy.
Millions of rands are paid out in compensation, a penalty which employers are willing to pay for failing to provide a healthy and safe work environment. Not only does this place additional burdens on our health services. It also diverts resources away from investment in the productive sector of the economy at a time when increasing such investment is one of the greatest challenges we face in our common quest for sustained economic growth and job creation.
The statistics paint an alarming picture of the health and safety situation in workplaces in South Africa. This is a state of affairs which we cannot tolerate - whether in human or financial terms.
I am forced to ask the question as to why many employers have failed to take more seriously their obligations in providing a healthy and safe work environment, given that this is clearly not just in their own interests, but in the interests of our economy and society in general. Is it the result of a lack of awareness or a lack of will?
Government's approach
But before I turn to the role of employers in addressing these challenges, allow me to outline our approach as government.
Our mission, as the custodians of OHS legislation, is to establish decent occupational health and safety standards and to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of OHS services through a nationally integrated inspection service that is underpinned by collaborative prevention strategies and policies that will ensure a healthy and safe workplace for every South African.
The Department's efforts in the past have been directed at attempting to ensure compliance through strict, "no nonsense" enforcement. However, this primarily reactive approach of being policemen and women, so to speak, has not delivered the desired results. Workplace accidents and fatalities continue and many employers are still prepared to simply pay the fines imposed and carry on with unsafe and unhealthy "business as usual".
We need a new, innovative approach to bring about a reduction of incidents and achieve our vision. Effective preventive strategies that involve all stakeholders are, I believe, crucial to addressing the challenges we face.
The Department of Labour will therefore pursue its OHS mission in a manner which is underpinned by prevention and partnership. We will carry out our statutory responsibilities to promulgate and enforce protective standards through the development and implementation of a number of new initiatives aimed at the following:
People-centred service delivery
Government has a duty to deliver quality services to the public. In the spirit of Batho Pele, we have a duty to maximise the effective and efficient utilisation of our limited resources, both financial and human, to ensure that workers' health and welfare is not compromised by their work environment.
Government has embarked on two major initiatives to give effect to this obligation. The Department of Labour has over the past year embarked on a major restructuring initiative to deliver an integrated, one-stop service to the public. The integration of our inspection and enforcement services responsible for various pieces of labour legislation, including occupational health and safety legislation, will improve our capacity and result in the delivery of more efficient and accessible, client-oriented services.
Secondly, government has taken an important policy decision to integrate and consolidate all government occupational health and safety competencies. This restructuring initiative will address the inefficiencies resulting from the current fragmentation of OHS administration across different government departments. Its implementation will maximise the utilisation of resources and give effect to government's commitment to deliver more effective and efficient OHS services in every sector of the economy. My Department has been working with other Department's to develop a programme to implement this decision, including a process aimed at reaching a common national vision which commits social partners and allows for the development of new OHS policy in a comprehensive and holistic manner.
The Challenge of Partnership
One of government's points of departure is that safe conditions and the absence of health risks at work cannot be ensured through state enforcement of the law alone. The successful achievement of work health and safety requires collaborative action by and the direct involvement of the main role players in the occupational health arena: employers, workers and government.
The future direction of OHS is a tripartite based, co-regulated system for managing OHS that is underpinned by the philosophy of prevention and partnership. Involvement of health and safety representatives in this process is crucial for success. Business and government must do what it takes to protect the workforce - government can set minimum standards of business behaviour and business can strive to exceed the minimum. In many cases, however, even where businesses have sufficient capacity, they appear to lack the will and the commitment.
For this reason, while the Department's approach to ensuring compliance with OHS standards will be premised on building co-operative partnerships aimed at prevention, the maintenance of a strong and credible enforcement presence will remain a priority. While some employers make good faith efforts to protect their workers, many others do little or nothing. A credible enforcement effort and capacity therefore remains an important intervention tool and an effective deterrent.
This brings me to the question of why too many businesses still have poor health and safety records, despite the fact that "Safety First" and "Prevention First" have been fashionable buzz words over the years. We all know that business is in business to make business. It is profits, mission, products, services, clients and the growth of the business that come first. So where does occupational health and safety fit in? The point is that good health and safety standards make business sense. The extent to which an enterprise devotes resources to the prevention of incidents can either support or undermine broader business objectives. Prevention strategies should be viewed as supporting and sustaining working capacity, productivity and quality, security of employment, positive workplace morale and stable labour relations. Health and safety should be viewed, not as an avoidable cost, but as a necessary investment in building a strong and profitable enterprise.
Effective workforce involvement is vital to building a robust and sustainable prevention culture at the workplace. Consultation with and involvement of workers and their organisations is an essential prerequisite for the effective management of OHS and other labour matters, and indeed management in general. It is, after all, employees who are most directly affected if the system malfunctions.
Government certainly can and must provide the enabling framework conducive to the building of partnerships to improve OHS, for example, through health and safety representatives, health and safety committees, co-regulation workplace forums, participation, representation, and so on. But for these to work, there has to be commitment by management. Enforcing compliance with the legislative framework is no guarantee that a viable, sustainable, profitable prevention culture will be created. Compliance means doing the minimum required by law and most companies can do more!
A further challenge is to raise the profile of OHS as an investment issue. Ill health costs industry thousands of rands and millions of lost days every year. It makes economic sense for employers to encourage a fit and healthy workforce because the cost of work-related accidents and diseases threatens the competitiveness of companies. Direct costs arising from time lost, increased administrative expenditure, damage to equipment and so on, amounts to far more than an initial investment to ensure a healthy and safe work environment.
We also need to systematise occupational health and safety training to address the considerable gap between needs and resources. While much of the OHS training in the past has been directed at workers, there is an urgent need to ensure the transfer of occupational health and safety skills and knowledge to line management.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I am cognisant of the fact that the collective challenges we face are considerable. But the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate. A qualitative leap in the levels of occupational health and safety is critical to the achievement of our vision of the labour market as it is to our country's economic and social objectives. It is part and parcel of the success of our enterprises and to our efforts as a nation to build a caring society.
The culture of our workplaces must change, and health and safety must be seen as a matter of common interest and concern rather than an issue for confrontation between workers and management.
Let us dream of incident-free workplaces. Let us protect our most valuable assets - our people. Let us put into action our vision of zero tolerance. Let us seize the opportunities offered by collaboration and partnership. Let us make the future happen.