Occupational Safety and Health Specialist Dale Beresford has told Stabroek Business that last Friday’s electrical accident at the Bauxite Company Guyana Inc’s (BCGI) Kurubuku Mines ought to be the subject of an independent investigation and that investigation should be undertaken and the findings made public without delay.
Chief Occupational Safety and Health Officer Charles Ogle has told this newspaper that the Ministry of Labour was preparing to investigate last Friday’s electrical explosion in which BCGI electrician Allan Benn sustained serious burns to his face, chest and hands.
But Beresford said that apart from the fact that BCGI is partially owned by the Government of Guyana and that a Ministry of Labour investigation would effectively amount to an employer investigating itself, there is also the question of “whether or not there may not be limits to the capacity of the Ministry of Labour to deliver a result the is correct and verifiable in every respect.
It may well be a question of capability since it is no secret that at both the public and private sector levels there are technical limitations to our ability to carry out these enquiries properly.”
According to Beresford the question of culpability or otherwise reposes in a range of issues that are enshrined in the Occupational Safety and Health Act. “If it would be precipitate to apportion blame at this stage.
We would want to ensure that we have a technically correct, thorough and transparent report that places the responsibility where it rightly belongs,” he said.
He added that one of the issues that had caught his eye in the days following the accident was “what appears to have been the length of time that it took to get the injured worker to an area where he could receive professional medical help. That alone leaves one to wonder whether the environment in which the employee was operating in the first place was the most comfortable one.”
And according to Beresford Guyana has perhaps reached “that dangerous place” where “the strictness of our safety and health regulations and the preparedness of people to adhere to those regulations has been outstripped by a preoccupation with what we call development.” He pointed to “Ambitious undertakings like tall buildings that may well take no account of the safety of the people who must build them and the people who must work in them.
Somehow we appear to have lost our way. In our haste to realize the requirements of what we loosely describe as development we are leaving the law behind as far as safety and health are concerned.
We are in that untenable situation where employers feel that they need not be mindful of the provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and where, moreover, the provisions of the Act are being overtaken by the kinds of undertakings that are ensuing in the various sectors of the economy.”
Describing the lack of regard for OSH regulations “in several sectors” as “a national scandal” Beresford told Stabroek Business that his own enquiries had revealed that there had been more than 300 worksite accidents, mostly in the construction, mining and agriculture sector in 2014 arising out of which there had been 14 deaths.
“As I understand it, in some of these cases there have been transgressions of the law in the matter of keeping to the time frame for reporting accidents which, in the case of fatalities, is immediately and in other cases a maximum of four days. Before consideration is taken of anything else it needs to be understood that if you fail to work within the stipulated deadlines you are in breach and can be penalized.”
