Faith / belief

Somewhere I read that if you believe in something, it can happen. I have mood swings on this statement. Sometimes, I experience it and other times, it all appears non-sense. 

A reading of religious teachings makes me to agree that faith will lead to the change. The holy personalities in the ancient times made persons suffering from diseases to be healthy, make dead man alive. The curse by them became a reality those times (as per books). In Hinduism, holy men sprinkled water on the persons either to bless or curse. 

Now a days, in whatsapp, everyday, several messages are received. Some of them say think, believe and do good. I feel there is nothing in wrong in praying or wishing good for all. 

Having faith alone is not enough. We have to be good mentally and physically. It will give peace of mind and possibly do good to the individual, family, friends and the society.

We do not believe such things easily because the preachers whom we see mostly do not practice what they say and this makes us to ridicule their sayings. The person may be wrong but the sayings may not be wrong.

Look at history to get the knowledge. May be over a period of thousands of years, there can be some misconceptions crept in. But, definitely there will be knowledge to see objectively and follow it. 

So, let us think good, do good and wish good for all. It will bring change within us and in the society also.

Too much illumination on streets

With the intention of good infrastructure, mobility, security, etc governments are striving hard for better facilities. One among them is street lights. But, this lighting has become so much that it has become excessive. In addition, the lighting provided by commercial establishment for bill boards, name boards, street side display boards, etc are adding to the illumination further. This looks like wastage of resources in generation, distribution and usage of power. Instead of providing street lights, local authorities may think of providing high mast lights which provide illumination to a large area and I think, it will save power also. Else, street lights at 100 m apart may be enough. Anyway, in main streets, the shops will be open till 2300-0000 hours and lighting from them will help the street users.

In inner areas, high mast lights appear to be sufficient. This will save valuable resources, power bills and maintenance charges.

Need for more safety officers, statutes are not favorable

Different state rules specify availability of safety officers at 4-6 in organizations employing as high as 10000.

But, this is grossly inadequate. A safety officer has to just walk through without stopping to cover such huge number of employees working particularly in construction/mining industries. And, then, if he observes any unsafe act or condition, he has to make a stopover and discussion will make the time available less for remaining areas. Then, to perform other duties like report making, coordination with statutory bodies, interactive meetings to brief management, etc does not make him to do his job fully.

Atleast one safety officer is required for every 250 personnel working so that he can perform his duty effectively. One may argue that nobody stops to engage more than statutory requirement. But, only few organizations have such attitude to engage more safety officers.

End of financial year - some to do listing

As the end of March month is approaching, industrial establishments will be working at frantic pace to meet their annual financial year production targets. It is likely that here and there safety requirements are skipped thereby increasing the risk.

It is better to plan testing of equipment like cranes, hoists, other material handling equipment, pressure vessels, safety relief valves, calibration of instruments,  inspection and repairs of structures and buildings, painting of equipment/piping/structures, preventive maintenance of equipment, load centres, transformers, PDBs, DG sets; cleaning of drains, etc in the beginning of the financial year at which time stress levels are supposed to be low compared to the last quarter of a financial year. Even refresher courses can be planned and conducted wherein managers will relieve their staff to attend the programmes. 

This will facilitate ensuring readiness of men and machinery and other infrastructure for safe work without accidents, incidents.

Safety monitoring should be done more stringently during peak production periods which will indicate the safety culture of the organization in times of pressures all around.

Accident reduction - meetings before start of work with executiing agencies

Use of persons on contract or by outsourcing is widely favored by organizations in manufacturing. The reasons being saving on wage bills compared to regular employees (unless persons engaged are highly skilled / specialized where they are paid higher than regular employees).

Generally, the awareness on hazards and safety measures to be followed are better with regular employees as compared to outsourced personnel who are prone to accidents due to poor awareness.

It is always better to have meetings with interested contractors, their site supervisor and site safety supervisor to discuss about the scope of work under the work order, the hazards in the work area, hazards likely to arise during execution of work and safety procedures to be followed along with company's safety policy and requirements. This will help them to understand and to follow. It is better to include penal clauses also for violations by listing so that clarity will be there on both sides. 

This practice will help to understand the issues and quote accordingly for the work. It is observed from accident reports in news papers / journals that contractors do not understand or ignore the requirements and once accident takes place, they will run away from the scene / abscond or cut sorry face facing the enquiry.

It is always a good practice to explain safety requirements to prospective agencies before issue of work order.

Intolerance to safety is not tolerable.

In any workplace, if employees are ignorant of safety procedures, they can be identified easily and can be trained. But, if persons are arrogant to comply with safety requirements even after gaining the knowledge, then they are more dangerous and can endanger the lives of others also. 

 Such persons should be summarily dismissed from the jobs and shown the door. These types of persons will even spoil the work place safety culture and can set a bad example for learners.

Intolerance to safety is not tolerable.

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.