A new item came today in a Telugu daily that one worker died while cleaning a concrete mixer. As per the news item, Wednesday is a weekend holiday for the company. Therefore, the worker went to the machine to clean the mixer. Not knowing this, another worker switched ON the mixer leading to injuries.
Though the intentions can't be questioned about cleaning on a holiday, it is not clear why different jobs are taken up on the same machine on the same day, by different teams. If such jobs are to be done, then LOTO systems has to be followed. Atleast, one supervisor should stand near the machine so that activities can be coordianted.
Similar incidents happened a few months ago as reported in a news paper that lead to death.
Normally, when someone opens the mixer chamber, a power trip mechanism gets actuated to trip the power supply to the machine, even if he does not switch OFF initially. Just to save few minutes, safety systems are bypassed leading to loss of many days of work. The persons responsible for bypassing the systems should be held guilty and punished severely. The punishment should not be worker level people but to supervisors or higherups who fail to see functionality of safety systems.
Such safety systems should not be located outside where they are easily accessible and can be bypassed. They should be located deep inside the machine so that one has to open entire machine to bypass. May be such designs can prevent persons from bypassing the safety systems.
Again, permit system should be enforced for works on all days irrespective of whether it is holiday or not. Persons should not be allowed to work on machines even if he is over enthusiastic to do the work. They should get permission from Manager of the plant to work on holidays or at period other than normal working hours and it should be logged and intimated to concerned supervisors and safety people. The equipment should have a sort of locking system with keys deposited in Security so that when some one draws the key of the equipment for some work, it will be recorded and the next person who wants to work will be aware of existence of persons.
Such injuries and deaths are total loss and painful to the families, organization and to the society and should be dealt with all seriousness.