Hau Giang province was divided from the former Can Tho province in 2004. Prior to the division, some provincial districts such as Vi Thanh, Vi Thuy, Phung Hiep and Long My had a developed agricultural sector. After division, Hau Giang is still among developed agricultural areas in the Mekong Delta, Particularly, agriculture is still a major economic source for farmers in rural areas of Hau Giang, where other production fields are under developed. Therefore, controlling occupational accidents and diseases to safeguard the health of farmers and develop agricultural economy is always a concern in Hau Giang. In the past time, Hau Giang has developed a network of trained volunteer farmers and made improvements in occupational safety and health in agriculture with the assistance from the project "Capacity Building of occupational safety and health in agriculture in Vietnam" (RAS/04/MO IIJPN) to widely disseminate occupational safety and health to farmers.
Organising WIND training courses for farmers
Initially, Hau Giang implemented two WIND training courses for farmers in Cay Duong town (Phung Hiep district) and Vi Dong commune (Vi Thuy district). 32 couples who are farmers and communal officers attended these two courses. After the training courses, the provincial project support committee often paid visits to collect improvement initiatives for further dissemination. One typical example is an improvement in emergent knifeswitch button, cooker table equaling belbow, clear windows ... in the house of Mr. Le Hoang Danh in Cay Duong town. These improvements have been applied by surrounding farmers because of its simplicity, effec tiveness, little strength loss and safety in the use electricity ...
These are just initial results but have shown active changes towards a safer working environment in Hau Giang. Currently, the province continues to implement activities to encourage farmers to make impro vements for further ensuring occupational safety in agriculture such as safety in the use of agro machines, safety in the use of electricity and safe use of chemicals.
Develop and maintain network of farmer WIND volunteers
Among the initial trainees, Hall Giang's Provincial Support Committee (PSC) selected 20 farmers be further trained and become a core force for the network of farmer volunteers. Volunteers will be introduced to WIND program and action-oriented edu cational method. They have now become' trainers for mini WIND workshops in the province and tried to expand this program widely. Attending and supporting these mini WIND workshops were also members of the PSc. This committee also holds monthly meetings, keeping contact with volunteers and listening to reports on local mini WIND workshop. For this reason, activities of farmer WIND volunteers have become well ordered. Farmer volunteers of the network not only improve their living and working conditions themselves but also give guidance for other farmers.
Providing training to farmer WIND volunteers for the purpose of WIND program expansion has brought into play its effectiveness since volunteers have more chance to be close to and discuss with farmers on agricultural production and use of pesticides, safe use of agro-machines in agriculture, which are very important to minimizing occupa tional accidents and diseases in agriculture. However, maintaining this network depends much on knowledge and interest in the program of volunteers and farmers. Therefore, to maintain the network of volunteers, Hau Giang PSC keeps contact with trainees and volunteers of the program, aiming to qJcourage them to continuously improve and establish close relations between PSC and volunteers. At the same time, Hau Giang PSC held a provincial achievement workshop to discuss occupational safety and health in agriculture and introduce good initiatives offarmers and invite 02 excellent farmers to present and introduce their family's improvements.
To continue to expand the network of volunteers to the rest of the province, the PSC has recom mended and intended to continue to organize WIN D/Train-of-trainers courses for volunteers in other districts, towns in the province (at least each district, town must be provided with 01 WIND/TOT course). Farmers with typically good improvements from four selected provinces will be awarded and gather in a national workshop to meet and exchange experience and good initiatives.
In the future, the network of farmers making improvements in working conditions established and organized by the PSC will be continuously expanded and regularly, stably operated. Accordingly, occupational safety and health improvements will be made more as well as original ideas offarmers will be applied for a safe and developed agriculture and for better health of all the people in rural areas of Hau Giang. Source:
Bureau for Safe Work | 