Lack of work-safety culture kills

Major workplace accidents are much like earthquakes or air crashes. For a couple of days they instill in us a sense of fear and good fortune - "There but for the grace of God go I" is a very familiar refrain for those of us from the English speaking regions of the world. And then just as quickly the memory disappears as the news moves on ... until of course the next time.

The next time came around very quickly. On Saturday 44 people were killed and 11 others injured when a tour bus fell into a valley after it crashed into a sports utility vehicle and a pick-up truck along the No 318 national highway in Nyemo County of Tibet autonomous region.

Days ago, the tragic dust explosion in an auto parts factory in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, which killed at least 75 people and injured nearly 200 on Aug 2, occupied center stage for just 24 hours before an earthquake hit Yunnan province.

There is a difference, though, between workplace accidents and earthquakes and air crashes. Unlike the latter, workplace accidents take place every single hour of every single day in factories, restaurants, mines and above all on roads. The greatest killing fields for workplace accidents are the highways and byways of China where every year the vast majority of about 200,000 road fatalities are caused by company trucks and buses sometimes inadequately maintained or downright unsafe, and usually driven by drivers squeezing the last drop of energy from their tired bodies.

But unlike the big accidents in factories, the authorities can't promise swift investigation and justice in road accident cases.

In fact, the government and the public are almost helpless bystanders to the carnage. Yet the causes of all work accidents and injuries wherever they take place are invariably the same.

First is the remorseless drive for profits and the treatment of major workplace accidents as "once in a lifetime" events, which are highly unlikely to happen and therefore not worth taking preventive steps against.

Second is the culture of impunity - that a bribe to health and safety inspectors can dispense with the need for expensive and time-consuming employees' training programs or safety improvement measures and that the legal/investigation system can be effectively muzzled. For example, in a recent workplace accident near my condominium in Kuala Lumpur, a young migrant worker fell to his death from a high-rise building and his friends were paid to say that he was depressed and committed suicide. Many such cover-ups may also have happened in China and elsewhere. Moreover, an Apple or a General Motors doesn't risk losing its reputation if a major accident takes place in a Chinese company it has outsourced its manufacturing to.

Third, the issue of workplace health and safety is not something only the bosses should be concerned about; it is important for workers too. In what seemed inconceivable only a few years ago, Chinese manufacturing and construction workers are in short supply. For the first time, workers have real muscle to demand their rights on workplace health and safety, yet too often they are prepared to trade their health for a few hundred yuan added to their monthly salary.

Some media reports say that the workers in the Kunshan factory were paid relatively high wages of 5,000 yuan ($806) a month but had to work and live in terrible conditions, which ultimately led to the deadly aluminum dust explosion. Compromising one's health or working in hazardous conditions for a few more dollars is not advisable, but some people feel they have no choice but to do so.

The Chinese government has taken significant strides in recent years to curb major accidents, particularly in the mining sector, and to bring those guilty of gross negligence to account. But a cultural shift in health and safety awareness cannot be achieved only by imposing judicial punishment on or getting higher premiums for work-related injuries from errant companies.

The efforts to build a culture of health and safety should begin from schools and technical institutes, and extend to workplaces where workers and their union representatives must demand healthy and safe working conditions.

Let the government make 2015 the "Year of Health and Safety" at work and see what kind of transformation could be made.

The author, based in Kuala Lumpur, is an international financial consultant and former fund management expert on the EU-China Social Security Project.