HSE Masters, a local safety compliance solutions company, has challenged Ghanaians to take safety issues more seriously.

According to the Managing Director of the company, Carlos Akyeampong, “people don’t understand why occupational safety should be taken seriously. Irrespective of where you work, either a banker, a Mobile Money vendor or a food vendor, safety consciousness must be part of your life.”

Speaking to a group of journalists in Accra, Mr Akyeampong noted that the safety thinking culture of Ghanaians is low and needs to be raised.

He cited the explosion at Atomic Junction in Accra as an example and added that the unfortunate incident could have been avoided.

“Proactively identifying things that can go wrong and putting in place measures that can control it, is a very important strategy to avoid disaster.”

The absence of national health and safety policy in Ghana is a source of worry to most employees who spend most of their lives at the workplace.

The abstract of a report on “Occupational Safety and Health Issues In Ghana: Strategies For Improving Employee Safety And Health At Workplace” explains that the work environment should be devoid of hazards as much as possible to provide healthy and decent work for the workforce.

The report states however that, numerous injuries, illnesses, property damages and process losses take place at different workplaces.

Therefore, there is an urgent need for guidelines to help manage and improve safety and health at the workplace.

“We have been providing services which includes safety trainings, coaching, procurement of effective protective safety equipment and the deployment of HSCEQ Safety Software Application to our numerous clients over the past five years, Chief Operations Officer at HSE Masters, Bernard Y.A,” Yeguo said.

We have over 50 network trainers across the work we deploy to provide safety trainings everywhere. Whatever we do at any given time or place has inherent risk factors. “Therefore, risk assessment should be conducted by all organisations,” he added.

In April this year, Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah announced that, Parliament of Ghana will pass the Occupational Safety and Health (OHS) Bill into law by the end of the year as part of efforts to promote workplace health and safety.

It is vital we acknowledge that the future of work is now with us and it behoves on us to adopt, adapt and modify the nature of work and our workplaces to stay current and compliant with the OSH standards,” Baffour-Awuah said. The working environment is changing with time and adjustments must be made with the times.

Appropriate safety and healthy environment at the workplace have a correlation with the attainment of decent work in Ghana.

The constitution of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is very explicit on how workers should be treated.

Its constitution states that the protection of the worker against sickness, diseases and injury arising out of employment is a fundamental element of social justice. The organisation reports that an estimated 2.34 million, including close to 360,000 fatal accidents and an estimated 1.95 million fatal work-related diseases occur each year at the workplace, with the vast majority of deaths (2.03 million) occurring as a result of a wide range of work-related diseases, referred to as occupational diseases.

It is estimated that about four per cent (US$1.25 trillion) of the Annual Global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is siphoned off by the direct and indirect costs of occupational accidents and diseases such as lost working time, workers’ compensation, the interruption of production and medical expenses.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) Occupational safety and health is a human right and decent work eventually is safe work.