Zim losing over 106 employees annually: NSSA
HARARE, Zimbabwe is losing over 76 employees every year due to occupational safety and health challenges with 51 having died in the 8 months to August 2018 out of 3841 serious injury cases recorded during the period.
Numbers from NSSA show that 106 employees died in 2014 out of 5736 serious injury cases reported while 54 died in 2015 out of 5380 cases reported. 2016 saw 5364 serious injury cases being recorded with 63 deaths.
Officiating the NSSA conference on occupational safety and health at work (SHAW) last week, minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Sekai Nzenza said government acknowledges that significantly, OSH problems in the country are a manifestation of the
socio-economic challenges in the country.
“Government, we are not at all oblivious of the fact that a significant extent of our OSH problems in the country is a manifestation of the socio-economic challenges in the country. The
de-industrialization and the general economic decline that our country has been experiencing over the years has created dangerous workplaces characterized by antiquated plant and equipment, acute shortage of necessary skills and competences and dilapidated infrastructure across many industrial sectors.
“Furthermore, the de- industrialization in the country has also given birth to the proliferation of the informal sector thereby compounding the occupational safety and health burden of the country,” she said.
Nzenza said it was regrettable that the country’s OSH performance reflected an average Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) of 2.2 over the past ten year period from 2008 to 2017 rendering Zimbabwean workplaces generally hazardous to work in.
She added although these available number although acknowledged by international labour organization (ILO) they were a far cry from from reality owing to non-reporting and underreporting associated with many workplaces in developing countries such as Zimbabwe.
“It’s a reality that the quest for Zimbabwe to attain sustainable development goals stands the risk of being set off by costs of occupational injuries and diseases as long as we continue to entertain such a negative OSH performance trajectory. It boggles the mind whether our current efforts are indeed adequate to transform this gloomy OSH picture to an OSH landscape that we are all proud of,” she said.
Nzenza said government, was unreservedly embracing vision Zero initiative earmarked for the achievement of zero harm at all workplaces.
