Geisha Kow­lessar

For the pe­ri­od 2006 to 2015 there were 102 fa­tal ac­ci­dents which oc­curred in the work­place and the con­struc­tion in­dus­try was cit­ed as hav­ing the high­est num­ber of fa­tal­i­ties as it record­ed 33 fa­tal ac­ci­dents for that pe­ri­od.

Say­ing that one death in the work­place was one too many, pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, in de­liv­er­ing her re­marks at the court's open­ing yes­ter­day, ex­pressed con­cern that 102 work­place deaths oc­curred over nine years.

Men­tal, emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal stress in the work­place, she added, al­so con­tributed to a poor work en­vi­ron­ment.

The sec­tor with the high­est num­ber of non-fa­tal ac­ci­dents was the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor with the low­est fig­ure at 249 in 2014 and the high­est 555 in 2008.

"These ac­ci­dents and in­ci­dents in my view are to a large mea­sure due to fail­ures and de­fi­cien­cy in the pol­i­cy and man­age­ment of oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty in sev­er­al busi­ness­es in this coun­try," Thomas-Fe­lix said.

She said as a na­tion the con­cept of in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty can­not be pro­mot­ed with­out si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in­sist­ing on ef­fec­tive poli­cies for oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health in all busi­ness en­ter­pris­es.

"More­over, we can­not turn a blind eye to the grow­ing num­ber of dis­eases which have been de­bil­i­tat­ing and dev­as­tat­ing to our cit­i­zens," Thomas-Fe­lix added.

She urged that it was the du­ty of each em­ploy­er whether in the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor to pro­vide a safe and healthy en­vi­ron­ment for work­ers and to de­vel­op and pro­mote a cul­ture which sup­port­ed health and safe­ty at work.

"I urge em­ploy­ers in both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors to adopt and pro­mote prop­er health and safe­ty poli­cies and pro­grammes at work. I al­so strong­ly rec­om­mend that they cre­ate aware­ness among their work­ers of the var­i­ous di­men­sions and short-term and long-term con­se­quences of re­lat­ed ac­ci­dents, in­juries and dis­eases and place the health and safe­ty of all work­ers as a pri­or­i­ty," Thomas-Fe­lix said.

Chal­lenges

She said with the in­creas­ing num­ber of dis­putes and mat­ters en­gag­ing the court there was the need for in­creased staff and ac­com­mo­da­tion.

In 2009 there were 692 new dis­putes filed and for the pe­ri­od 2013 to 2015, 2,384 dis­putes were filed.

The court, Thomas-Fe­lix added, con­tin­ued to ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges of space as judges and staff func­tioned dai­ly in less than ide­al con­di­tions.

"The short­age of staff par­tic­u­lar­ly in the court re­port­ing de­part­ment con­tin­ued to be a prob­lem and, this year, we ex­pe­ri­enced bud­getary cuts from the very be­gin­ning of the year.

As a re­sult sta­tionery and ba­sic equip­ment were scarce.

"These chal­lenges have stymied the smooth op­er­a­tion of the court. Many prac­ti­tion­ers can at­test to the fact that their sev­er­al re­quests for ver­ba­tim notes of ev­i­dence from the court have not been met in a time­ly man­ner due to the lack of sup­port staff to pre­pare these," Thomas-Fe­lix added.

Dis­putes filed

From Sep­tem­ber 14, 2015, to Sep­tem­ber 9, 2016, some 1,171 new dis­putes were filed at the court which was 450 more than the num­ber of dis­putes filed the pre­vi­ous year. The court dis­posed of 963 dis­putes this year which was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the 702 dis­putes which were dis­posed of for the same pe­ri­od 2014-2015.

Thomas-Fe­lix said the dis­pos­al rate for 2015 to 2016 was 82.2 per cent.

A break­down of the to­tal num­ber of dis­putes dis­posed in

2015 to 2016 is as fol­lows:

�2 258 were dis­posed by judg­ments

�2 157 were set­tled bi­lat­er­al­ly

�2 111 were dis­posed by con­cil­i­a­tion

�2 30 were dis­missed for want of pros­e­cu­tion

�2 407 were with­drawn by par­ties, main­ly due to the con­cil­ia­to­ry ef­forts of the court.