Wrong message to public / industries with passive / lethargic attitude of regulators

It is difficult for a traffic police person to control all violators due to his/her limitations in managing them. A person can't stop all violators passingby. Similarly a regulatory authority person can't inspect all factories all the time or keep watch on activities and take action. It is humanly impossible.

But, whatever is observed and is within the approach, regulatory personnel should take to task. For whatever reasons, let it be frustration or personal, if even these observed violations are not tasked, then the violators will of the impression that they can get away and the chance of penalty or regulatory action is minimal.

As regulators are paid for ensuring prevention of violations, whatever comes to notice has to be regulated. Atleast this type of actions will send message that one can't go scotfree. 

Why only safety department should see the deficiencies? why not the line staff?

It is a misconception in several industries that safety is the responsibility of safety department. Production staff feel that their job is only production. They do not give a thought for ensuring safety in their work, i.e. keeping the work areas free from hazards. They may be seeing these hazards, day in and day out, but little action is taken in addressing the same. The safety department when points the same, no action or little action is taken. And, when some incident happens, that time production department puts a sorry face or blame game is kicked off. They say that it is not their job or they have given request to maintenance department or why safety department did not caution in advance or even if cautioned why they did not tell about the consequences and so on.

Persons, should not concentrate only on production activities at the cost of lack of safety, for the sake of furthering their careers. They should not ignore safety and allow things to go unsafely in their domain of work. Just ordering subordinates to ensure safety is not sufficient. Doing work unsafely will not enhance productivity in the long run. May be in a project, there were no accidents inspite of unsafe work culture. But, that is because of some luck i.e. all unsafe parameters did not converge, by fluke. But, this can not be a norm. And, safe practices do not delay the work. In fact, in the long run, safety will enhance the productivity. If it is found such arrogant managers are there, management should sack them without hesitation. Because, these are the persons who do not mind in jumping the ship in case of change of situation. Visibility of the managers in shopfloor and interaction with field staff frequently is required. This will help the managers to see the things as it is and also learn what are the issues faced by field personnel so that appropriate actions and allocation of resources can be done. 

In general, safety departments anywhere do not have the authority to cut power supply or prevent persons from doing the work where hazards are present. As it is, safety department functions in advisory capacity only. Only those managements which do understand the importance of having safety in the workplace lend an ear to the safety department. And in these places, employees too will be happy and join hands for higher productivity.

How many organizations stop the work if a hazard is spotted and restart only after taking corrective and preventive actions is debatable. One may tell that safety is first. But, I am not sure in how many places really it receives top priority.

In general, production, quality and safety take slots from top to bottom in that order. Even those who got statutory powers to enforce safety also will have second thoughts before taking the violating organizations to court of law. This can be said firmly due to the accidents taking place in the production facilities and how many of these were found guilty and taken to task in inspections. Under staffing and having support facilities to regulators is also one of the reasons for this. 

What is required is self discipline and strict implementation of statutory provisions and strengthening of the hands of regulators. Any violation should lead to total stoppage of the facility. Any person in the organization should be able to tell hazards in the place and take to the notice of concerned for rectification. Persons identifying shall not be ridiculed or punished. 

Similarly, one should not think that punishing by fines or paying compensation will control the situation. Just ordering fines is not enough. It is said nobody can put a value to the life. It is not a commodity to assign a value. The compensations offered for an injury or death during accidents really do not have any meaning. It is to be seen by life value assessors in the perspective that what value they find for their own life in case of an injury or fatality. A person earning something may earn many times of it either in the same company or different company or by self employment. There are many cases where persons started career as peons, paper boys, etc have become millionaires and provided employment to many. Then what is the value for emotional attachment with family and friends. 

Infrared thermography - use it to know about impending electrical fire in your place

Yesterday (14.12.2012) there was an article in The Hindu, about infrared thermography and its use to detect  heating of electrical systems at the point of electrical cable input joints due to over load, loose contacts, improper wiring, etc. The heat emitted is read by the portable device and temperature is displayed to decide about whether it is within or above the limits. I also heard earlier from my colleagues that wall mounted thermography devices are also available to monitor continuously about critical electrical systems.
As most of the fire mishaps are attributed to electrical short circuit (more than 40%) that led to loss of lives, property damage, use of infrared thermography for electrical safety inspections in residential buildings, shops, public places, etc will help in saving us from the perils of fire.
For a long time, I had this question in mind about knowing the health of electrical wiring in my apartment. Fires in apartments, multi storey buildings endanger human lives of all and one should check about electrical safety aspects in the building.
From my electrician, I found that generally, the wiring lasts for 15-20 years, though industrial wiring lasts for more than 30 years as per information from colleagues in power supply department. However, these are theoretical and based on experience limited to specific conditions.
As the author in his article mentioned, over loading is a reason for electrical fires. Wiring gets deteriorated quickly  under excess loads and the general information about life of electrical cable can't be applied universally. And, it is human tendency to add electrical loads with or without knowledge about electrical safety. At least at home front, it is the lack of knowledge on electrical safety that keeps people to add electrically operated kitchenware, electronics, etc. Tripping of MCBs will not lead to thinking by the residents for reasons, and instead, they just put it back and resume with the work.
And, in factories, it is the greed to prolong till it breaks without understanding or may be underestimating the costs to be incurred in case of fire. It is good that insurance companies are giving a thought to electrical safety audits. In many of my posts in this blog and in my comments in newspaper websites, I stressed upon the role of government agencies, regulators and insurance companies for enforcing electrical safety audit without which heavy premiums, penalties and punishments should be the order of the day. Only then, everybody will become aware of electrical safety and other issues and save themselves from fire mishaps and its consequences.
As mentioned in the article, there is company called CSR Impex Private Limited (C.Vidyasagar Reddy, Ph: 040-65212780, 9440066907)  which is involved in use of this technology for the past ten years to inspect electrical panels of various establishments, especially software companies. (I did not check with the company but as I believe in electrical safety audits to know the healthiness of electrical systems, I thought that I can reproduce this information appeared in the newspaper for use by all).

Who is responsible for delay in work? Regulators or managements?

Many times regulatory process is shown as a reason for delay in work progress or failure to achieve production targets or failure to start or complete projects in times or ending up in losses. However, they do not explain or do not want to see why proper planning and execution is not done to comply with applicable procedures and statutes. When procedures are not followed and if and when the regulatory body finds violations or finds new information, they are bound to issue notices. Had the entity disclosed the information fully about its intentions initially itself or complied with conditions subsequently, there would not have been any tussle or heart burn.
Companies blame that the information which is not asked earlier is being asked later and their works are being suspended or such new information is shown as a cause for stopping the work. As long as any activity got potential to cause harm to people and environment, it has to be addressed, even if not during application process.These systems are evolved over a period of time based on past experience and considerable forethought and can't be questioned for one's problems.
Economic growth or profits of the companies alone can't be a reason for bypassing/violation the regulatory process. Safety of the persons and environment should get top priority over other issues and nobody got any right in this regard.

Leniency to violators by authorities

Every day, we see reports of many accidents, incidents, violations by factories. There will be hue and cry for lenient attitude / laxity on the part of the regulating authorities. There will be injuries/fatalities/release of fumes, gases from plant to public domain/dumping of chemicals in the night in public areas/failure of containment from tankers, etc. Immediately, regulators are found fault for not keeping eye on violators. Regulators also visit the affected areas, factories and say that there is no licence for operation or matter is under investigation or notices are slapped, etc. The issue will be left. Media also will leave it as the importance is lost after the item is aired in all channels.
This is not happening in our country alone. When we see reports appearing in several websites of different countries, we come to know that this is worldwide phenomenon. Even, in countries where regulators are tough nuts, stiff penalties are imposed, still accidents/incidents/violations continue to occur and reasons seem to be silly. Though, many do not agree now-a-days that 'safety is nothing but common sense', still that common sense alone can prevent many accidents.
We are all greed and want to save few bucks by following short cuts. Finally, after sometime, everybody would have experienced a huge loss because of one accident and the loss far exceeds all savings accrued so far from short cut methods. Still, the lessons are confined to the affected individual alone and again the same individual will bypass safety after sometime, because our memory is short.
In such a situation, what a regulator can do is the big question, when we do not have self discipline. Then, we have to face the consequences and suffer.

Why accidents continue to occur?

We read regularly in news papers that accidents continue to occur though here and there the concerned are charge sheeted. Most of the time, the families of the victims are compensated by the managements and the issue is resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. Many times, accidents are reported. It is likely that there are many accidents which are not reported and settled without notice. Though this may satisfy the aggrieved, it will not stop recurrence of accidents, if not in the same organization, as no lessons are drawn. The only lesson drawn is that it is economical to pay rather than ensure safety at workplace. This is a common sense. Why one will spend more when there are ways to reduce costs.

There will be reports for sometime in newspapers and then everybody will forget. This is true everywhere in the world. In some countries, as experts say, regulators are task masters and award huge penalties. However, the fact that accidents continue to occur in these countries shows that there is something wrong in implementation of accident prevention programme.

When there is some financial scam, more are affected and there are many stake holders in voicing there concern and try to punish the responsible. However, this is not visible in case of industrial accidents. I do not know, in how many cases, regulators stopped operations permanently after an accident. There may be suspension of operations for a while, but not as a whole. Managements can absorb losses due to suspension of operations for a while. Some can even clevery carryout maintenance works during this period which may be due after sometime and thus save time from annual shutdown.

A serious message is to be sent to managements with severe actions that can make them to realize about the importance of safety given by governments and that they may lose even their personal wealth if any accident occurs.

Otherwise, it is better for the regulators to stop issuing press notes about poor conditions in factores and be contended with the existing conditions.

Safety violations are found, then why the plants are allowed to run?

In an article at http://www.safetyxchange.org/, I read that there were more than 700 violations of safety, operation and environment found by OSHA, EPA and other regulating agencies. It was questioned about the compulsions or need for allowing the unit to operate though so many violations were found before the spillage itself. Many times, regulators identify violations and give time to rectify or pay penalty later for continued violations. Only a few times, unit operations were suspended or stopped. This creates a lenient attitude by managements that outweigh profits over the loss of production suffered because of suspension of unit operations to carryout works for rectifying the violations. After some accident / incident occurs, we repent for not doing the right thing before the event. This like applying the balm after burning rather than avoiding the burns itself.

If plant operations are stopped after allowing some time to correct, then everybody will fall in line and though it looks difficult to achieve safety discipline and people are scared of immediate losses, long term benefits will outweigh these losses and every one will follow the directions of regulators. Or they will not give chance for regulators to find safety violations and a system of identification and rectification will be established by the organizations themselves.