OMG! – He is not wearing PPE!
And he obviously hasn’t read the Safe Work Method Statement! See the video below.
Seriously, before you complain that the photocopier is stuck again or the coffee in the boardroom is the wrong brand, spare a thought for brick workers in Bangladesh suffering in its current building boom. Men are paid around $2/day, women $1.20 and kids much less to toil in brick factories and building sites. Bricks from demolished buildings are recycled, cleaned or broken up by hand which is cheaper than using new ones. There are some 6000 authorised brick fields using production methods which are some 150 years old. Soot covered children work the coal fired kilns and the rest of the family toils in the pit and probably lives on site. There is no protective equipment or manual handing devices. Accidents are obviously common place, but workers carry on after quickly applying makeshift bandages.
See the full story here:
Addendum sent in by Reader:
After watching channel 7’s Sunday night TV program this week, I was shocked at the ship recycling industry in Bangladesh. I had never seen it before.
Discussion Talk – If anyone watched it what did they think?
Without getting into too much detail;
These workers including young children, who work 12 hrs per day and 7 days a week, break down massive ships without using any safety practices or PPE.
On average, one worker dies in the yards a week and every day a worker is seriously injured. It seems like nobody really cares. Workers are easily replaceable to the yard owners: if one is lost, they know another 10 who are waiting to replace them for less than 50c per hr.
· Workers wear no protective gear and many work barefoot (walking through cut steal)
· There is hardly any testing systems for the use of cranes, lifting machinery and tools
· The yards re-use old warn out ropes and chains recovered from the broken ships without testing their strength.
· Fires, gas explosions, falling steel plates, exposure to poisons from bunker oil, lubricants, paints and
· Old Cargo contaminates and asbestos have left thousands with respiratory diseases.
WHAT IS MY POINT!
· We are a lucky to live and work in a country where we are provided with good safety.
Some seem to take this safety for granted and the benefits of having access to good safety systems, devices and PPE.
· Here we have a country that does not seem to care about deaths as workers are expendable, and yet with all the safety systems we have in Australia, some still don’t take safety serious.
· Wear safety gear; glasses, dusk masks, gloves etc. Follow safe work procedures.
We have the opportunity to protect ourselves, many don’t…WE DO CARE…many
don’t.
“We have got it pretty good; please don’t take your life and safety for granted”
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below