Risk Assessments to Increase Safety and Health at Work
The Labour, Family and Social Affairs Ministry and the Labour Inspectorate are to join the Europe-wide two-year campaign of European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (OSHA) promoting risk assessments as means for a healthy workplace.
The "Healthy Workplaces: Good for you. Good for business" campaign with the message that most work-related accidents could be prevented by effective risk assessments, focuses on high-risk sectors, such as construction, health care and agriculture.
While regular risk assessments are already obligatory in the EU, the campaign will try to discard the common belief that risk assessments involve complicated bureaucratic procedures, Romana Tomc, state secretary at the Labour, Family and Social Affairs Ministry, said.
The ministry will organise practical risk assessment guidelines, while the companies and organisations with the most innovative risk assessment measures are to be awarded.
Borut Brezovar, head of the Labour Inspectorate, said the inspectors will do more checks during the campaign to encourage companies to become more active in the field of safety and health at work.
According to EUROSTAT's figures and estimates by the International Labour Organisation, some 5,720 people die in work-related accidents in the EU each year, while 159,500 die of occupational diseases.
In Slovenia, some 14,770 work accidents were reported in 2007, in which 29 people died, 17 of them in the construction sector.
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