A new move to reduce accidents in factories

By Francis Emorut                                       

A health occupational safety training programme has been launched, aimed at reducing accidents in manufacturing and processing plants.

Upon completion of the training, participants will be awarded a document in the form of a passport titled Occupational Health Safety Security Environment (OHSSE) for East Africa.

The training will be spearheaded by Quest Energy and Institute of Petroleum Studies.

According to Patrick Ruharuza who is the chief executive officer of Quest Energy, the programme will be conducted by experts in engineering and will last one to two months.

On scrupulous conmen attempting to forge the OHSSE document, he made it clear that it be manipulated because it has a security system.

“No one can forge it at Nasser and Nkurumah roads because it has an integrated system which is secure,” he told guests during the proramme’s launch at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala.

Ruharuza said the introduction of the training programme comes against background of statistics that 84% of sustained injures emanate from manufacturing and processing industries in Kampala alone.

The programme, he said, also targets citizens within the East African Community and the states that embrace integration.
 

The state minister of trade Dr.James Mutende (right) the executive director of Uganda National Bureau of Standards Ben Manyindo (centre) and the chief executive officer of Quest Energy Patrick Ruharuza launching the East African Passport occupational health safety. PHOTO/Francis Emorut

And the official’s advice to citizens: ‘embrace the safety culture to reduce on accidents’.

He said that with the discovery of nascent oil and gas in East African countries, it is imperative that the workforce that will be employed by oil and gas industries undertakes training.

The training will cover topics such as first aid, firefighting, security management, defensive driving and others.

The state minister of trade and industry Dr. James Mutende was shocked to learn that over 300,000 people die annually within the work place and that 250 million accidents occur every year, according to International Labour Organization statistics.

“This is alarming and is an eye opener to Ugandans. The training on safety measures is therefore timely. He added that preventing accidents and injuries should be a key priority to everyone.

“It is important that the workforce gets training in occupational health safety.”

The state minister went on to urge Quest Energy to deliver in training of safety health and also called upon the public and government agencies to support the initiative.

“I would like to urge the government agencies and organizations to take their staff for training, especially engineers, and this will promote health safety measures.”