The grue­some death of 39-year-old Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) em­ploy­ee Kern Eti­enne, in a 12-foot trench in San Fer­nan­do on Sun­day, is yet an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion that all is not well with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of T&T’s Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act.

Eti­enne’s death comes four months af­ter the equal­ly grue­some death of 35-year-old Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon, a pip­efit­ter em­ployed by Massy En­er­gy, who died at a hos­pi­tal in Colom­bia three days af­ter suf­fer­ing fourth-de­gree burns across his body in an in­ci­dent at the Ni­Quan gas-to-liq­uids plant on the moth­balled re­fin­ery com­pound at Pointe-a-Pierre.

And the na­tion can­not for­get the hor­rif­ic in­ci­dent in Feb­ru­ary 2022, in which four divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry–died af­ter be­ing stuck in a 30-inch di­am­e­ter un­der­wa­ter at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing’s off­shore plat­form in Pointe-a-Pierre.

Three in­ci­dents in which the lives of six men, most of whom were in the prime of their lives, were snuffed out on their job sites.

The sta­tis­tics from the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) in­di­cate that in the six years be­tween 2017 and 2022, 92 in­di­vid­u­als died in cir­cum­stances con­firmed by the agency as OSH fa­tal­i­ties. Of the 92 fa­tal­i­ties, 17 were en­gaged in the min­ing and quar­ry­ing and 11 in con­struc­tion.

It is al­so note­wor­thy that OS­HA’s web­site in­di­cates that there were 9,881 ac­ci­dents re­port­ed to the agency be­tween 2017 and 2022, of which 448 were con­sid­ered to be crit­i­cal.

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act de­fines a crit­i­cal in­jury to in­clude one that places life in jeop­ardy, pro­duces un­con­scious­ness, re­sults in sub­stan­tial loss of blood, in­volves the frac­ture of a leg or arm, but not a fin­ger or toe and in­volves the am­pu­ta­tion of a leg, arm, hand or foot, but not a fin­ger or toe.

At sec­tion 6, the OSH Act states very clear­ly: “It shall be the du­ty of every em­ploy­er to en­sure, so far as is rea­son­ably prac­ti­ca­ble, the safe­ty, health and wel­fare at work of all his em­ploy­ees.”

The fact that 92 peo­ple have died in the six years be­tween 2017 and 2022, in cir­cum­stances that have been cer­ti­fied by the OS­HA as be­ing due to OSH is­sues, in­di­cates that T&T, as a coun­try, has a great deal of work to do in im­prov­ing the safe­ty of work­places.

In pi­lot­ing the amend­ment to the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act in 2006, the then Min­is­ter of Labour and Small and Mi­cro-En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Dan­ny Mon­tano, made the im­por­tant point that the leg­is­la­tion alone was not go­ing to save lives and not go­ing to pro­tect work­ers or em­ploy­ees in the work­place.

“We have to de­vel­op a cul­ture of safe­ty on both the part of em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees. It is the mind­set and the cul­ture that what we do, must be safe and that the en­vi­ron­ment that we cre­ate for our­selves must be safe,” said Mon­tano 17 years ago.

The OS­HA must take the lead in de­vel­op­ing a cul­ture of safe­ty in work­places.

It can do this by mak­ing unan­nounced vis­its to work­places that are sus­pect­ed of be­ing un­safe and mak­ing bet­ter use of the penal­ties in the leg­is­la­tion. That would be the stick, but the car­rot can be an up­date and re­pur­pos­ing of the ‘Chase Char­lie Away’ cam­paign that was ini­ti­at­ed by Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (SWM­COL) more than 40 years ago.