AP to Step Up Vigil for Safety in Industrial Units

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government would step up its vigil to ensure safety in the industries in view of a series of industrial mishaps in the state, especially in Visakhapatnam.

Accordingly, the factories department would initiate measures for regular safety committee meetings involving managerial staff and the workers on a 50:50 share, once every three months, in the industrial units having more than 250 workers.

The authorities say this facility will help the workers express their safety concerns in their industrial units so that the management has to initiate measures to immediately rectify safety lapses.

Though the tenure of each safety committee lasts two years, the industrial units mainly handling hazardous materials and dealing with risky processes must conduct regular meetings. The minutes of such meetings are to be sent to the concerned factories’ officials who, in turn, should seek compliance with the minutes by the management without fail.

The industrial safety experts also suggest that safety meetings be made mandatory not only for hazardous industries having more workforce but also be made compulsory for industrial units or factories handling even less hazardous materials so that a chance of safety lapse may not arise.

Moreover, they suggest allowing workers to genuinely raise the safety lapses in their area of work in the industrial unit whenever they find, to the members of the safety committee in the periodical meetings or alerting them by any means so that such lapses are immediately rectified.

There is also a proposal to involve women workers in the safety committee meeting so that they also may raise any safety concerns in the industry from their perspective to be attended immediately. They call for giving up the practice of taking the workers in the safety committee who fail to raise genuine safety issues, fearing trouble from the management.

AP factories department director in-charge M. Mohan Rao said, “Though the practice of conducting safety committee meetings in mainly the hazardous industrial units has been there for some time, we intend to implement it strictly. We would ensure the department seeks compliance reports of the minutes of such safety committee meetings so that it will help to address the issue of industrial mishaps in the state.”

AP has nearly 1,510 hazardous industrial units at present.

The state government has been insisting on safety audits on mainly hazardous industrial units at regular intervals and even roping in the third-party safety audits. This has helped bring down the number of mishaps. There is a need for regular inspection on industrial equipment, the hazardous materials they use, conduct of mock drills for emergency operations involving all the workforce and awareness drive on safety norms to help address the industrial mishaps and help save the lives of the workforce.