In fulfillment of its mandate stunting fatalities, accident, and incidents across all sectors of the nation’s economy as well as extensive safety advocacy, the Occupational Safety and Health Association in collaboration with the Spring Creek Integrated recently organized a one day Health and Safety Awareness Course for the management staff of the Nigerian Shippers council through the virtual platform.
Declaring the safety awareness training open, the Executive Director of OSHAssociation United Kingdom, John Flynn FOSHA, said that the issue of safety remains an issue of critical concern across all sectors, especially the maritime sector. While itemizing some of the key issues of safety concern, John Flynn opined that more efforts are required as regards policies and regulations development, which will go a long way to revamp the sector by instilling a substantive level of safety consciousness and confidence in the mind of workers in the sector.
While charging the management staff to ensure health and safety compliance in the council, the OSHAssociation Executive Director expressed his optimism that the continued Safety Capacity Development training will help the council as far as Occupational Safety and Health best practices and its localization is concerned in the country. According to him, the Association training is specifically tailored to suit industrial needs and peculiarities as far as Health and Safety are concerned in the Maritime Sector.
“OSHAssociation provide safety training programmes tailored to the needs of ships, shipyards, and their workers. No matter what your workday looks like, our training not only suits the industry but instills a substantive level of consciousness in the mind of the workers of the sector and ensures that they are equipped with all the fundamental and vital knowledge to see that they carry out their activities safely. He said.
Similarly, the Regional Administrator of the Association, Engr. Emmanuel Uwalaka gave a brief erudition on the strides and achievement of the Association in public sector and it’s impact as regards effective safety advocacy across all sectors of the economy. While expressing his delight in the Continues Capacity training programmes which is being premiered, Engr. Uwalaka attributed the high rate of accidents and fatalities across the nation to a lack of compliance to set safety guidelines as well as deliberate ignorance and disregards to safety measures.
Speaking at the event, the chairman of the Rivers State Chapter of the Association, Dr. Chris Mitchell FOSHA educated the staff on the need for management staff to also be safety leaders in their workplaces. In his presentation on “Continuous Development and Improvement on Workplace Safety: A Gradual Journey to Health And Safety Skills in the Workplace”, Dr. Chris emphasized the need to enact a working organisational safety culture in a workplace which according to him is very vital because “actions driven by organizational believes can have a significant influence on the workers’ action.
While itemizing the reasons for resistance to achieving a safety culture include doubt, leadership, infrastructural, and motivation among others, Dr. Chris established that the characteristics of a positive safety culture must include value, personal safety, willingness, and safe behaviors adding that an individual can be committed to safety wholly especially if they are consciously competent, reward safe behaviors, looks at eliminating causes of hazards instead of placing blames, as well as demonstrating and active behavior towards coworkers.
Also speaking at the event, Mr. Ayoola Kolawole Ishola MOSHA; a Safety Engineer gave common examples of Shipping and Port Accidents including the modalities that ought to be implemented to prevent or address the situation as the case may be. Mr. Kola in his presentation titled “Workplace Health and Safety Best Practices in Shipping and Port Operations” explained that everyone (including the supervisor, the employer as well as the organization) has a critical role to play in terms of health and Safety at workplace.
OSHAsssociation has never relented in ensuring that the gospel of safety is localized extensively, especially through awareness, training and capacity development programmes for organizations across different sectors of the industry. This and many other strides have so far established the Association as the top training and impacting institution in Nigeria and beyond as far as Occupational Safety and Health are concerned.
– Team
Safety View Media
