During the process of economic renovation and national industrialization and modernization, the emergence of various economic forms and the implementation of foreign investment encouragement and technological transfer policies have, on the one hand, brought about significant achievements, but on the other hand caused new challenges to life and health of workers and labor environment. In particular,
· A workforce boom in cities, townships has led to an increase in occupational accidents as a large number of laborers have to work in an unsafe climate and do inappropriate jobs;
· The development of over 120,000 enterprises (mostly small and medium sized), over 1 million households doing business and 130,000 farms applying generally backward technologies and poor management methods has been creating a paradox between employment and economic growth giving prominence to safety and health of workers;
· The wide use of modern technologies and techniques does affect working conditions, safety and health of laborers for the following reasons: Workers have little time to be familiar with new machineries, equipment and materials and are unaware of risky factors of these devices; the use of sophisticated machineries, which are not suitable for Vietnamese people form, has led to psychological pressures and mental disorders and other diseases.
Deriving from inadequate awareness of and responsibility for OSH performance by levels, industries, employers and employees in the early period of industrialization and modernization, violations of OSH regulations have been present in many places over the past time, resulting in a large of number of occupational accidents and diseases. According to statistics and reports by provinces and cities nationwide, there were about 3,560 occupational accidents with 445 deaths and thousands of injuries per annum, on average, in the period of 1995-2003. The first half of this year saw about 2,490 labor accidents, affecting 2,569 people, of whom 238 died.
Causes of occupational accidents mostly are relating to employers, who violate legal regulations on OSH such as those on standards, norms (53%), working conditions (13.9%), recruitment and training (11.3%), dangerous and hazardous jobs (9.1%). For the employees' part, elementary reasons include poor awareness and consciousness of OSH and absence of PPE. Besides, there are also other reasons such as polluted working environment, hazardous elements (dust, toxic gas, noise, radiation…) with excessive concentration at the production sites. Results of labor protection survey by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs showed that 8% of enterprises are in so bad working conditions, 15-20% bad, 50% quite bad and 20% good.
The Ministry of Health reported 846 cases of occupational diseases in 2003, increasing the accumulative number of occupational disease patients to 19,484 by the end of 2003, of whom 75.7% got silicosis, 16.8% occupational deaf, 1.49% lead poisoning and 1.1% skin problems. The number of occupational disease patients in the recent five years equals two thirds of the figure in the whole previous period. Moreover, at present, many industries and localities do not report occupational diseases in their localities. According to the Central Institute for Health Appraisal, the real figure would be much more than the reported one.
The above actual situation indicated that occupational accidents, diseases, environmental pollution, fires and violations of working conditions and OSH have tended to increase, particularly in SMEs, industrial parks and high-tech zones. If we do not take active and urgent measures, impacts on social security, environment will become more serious. The International Labour Organization estimates that annual economic damages from occupational accidents and diseases in the world account for 4% of GDP (approximately 1,251,353 million USD); in Vietnam from 1995 to 2003, total cost for and damage from occupational accidents was reported at 103,757,308,972 VND. In 2003 alone, the figure was 20,740,540,000 VND, 12 times as much as that in 1995.
OSH performance is, therefore, an inter-ministerial and inter-regional task requiring the participation of ministries, industries and unions. The Labour Code and Decree No 06/CP dated 20 January 1995 by the government stipulates that MoLISA, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education and Training, provincial and municipal people's committees are responsible for State administration over OSH.
The National OSH Program is scheduled to implement in five years (2006-2010) with the following objectives:
- Strengthen and improve the management effectiveness of State administration over OSH performance, focusing on the key issues of developing and giving guidance on implementation of legal documents; strengthening inspections; and collaborating between State functional agencies and unions;
- Improve awareness and consciousness by employers and employees and farmers;
- Basically improve working conditions of employees; Prevent and minimize occupational accidents and diseases, fires and working environmental pollution; reduce the rate of workers engaged in hazardous occupations;
* Specific targets:
- Training: towards providing training to at least 80% of the employers, employees and vocational students;
- Inspection: ensuring inspecting production sites applying machines with strict OSH regulations and those engaged in such fields as mining, construction, chemical production, power transmission … at least one time per year;
- Gradually reduce the proportion of poor-condition working places;
- Reduce occupational accident frequency;
- Set up the occupational accident compensation fund; immediately conduct investigations in fatal occupational accidents, ensuring all of these are investigated and concluded, and strictly punished;
- Caring for workers' health: developing and implementing the strategy of workplace health improvement with the slogan “healthy workplace”, which should be launched at all enterprises, industrial zones in order to better protect workers’ health, to develop good examples of OSH performance and to intensify the neighborhood campaigns;
- Expand and boost international cooperation in OSH field to utilize experience and helps from the outside;
Developing National OSH program is suitable for the trend of international integration, particularly in the context that Vietnam is preparing for joining the WTO. This also reflects Vietnam's commitments to the Convention 155 on Occupational Safety and Health and Working Environment, which stipulates that adopting countries are responsible for “developing and seriously implementing national policies on occupational safety and health and working environment” towards the adoption of Convention 184 on OSH in agriculture./. |
