Background
Occupational Health and safety is a global concern for all employers, workers, and national governments. Based on data released by the ILO, every year there are 2 million deaths worldwide due to work related causes. Of these, some 354.000 are due to fatal accidents. In addition, there are more than 270 million occupational accidents and 160 million work related diseases which affect workers every year. The financial cost for these work-related hazards is significant.
The rate of fatal incidents in developing countries is four times higher than in industrialized country. In developing countries, most work related accidents and illnesses occur in primary industries such as farming, fishing and logging, mining and construction. Low literacy and poor training regarding safety methods lead to high death rates. Hazardous substances kill 340.000 workers every year, causing untold suffering, illness including cancer, heart diseases and strokes.
In this 2017, Indonesia has been implemented the work safety act (Law No. 1, 1970). But the implementation of the Law No 1, 1970 is not yet up to the maximum. As we know, that there are still many accidents happen in some companies. Based on the data from BPJS (Workers Social Security Agency) in the end of 2016, the number of accident in Indonesia was 105.182 cases with the number of fatality was 2.375 cases. The factor related accident was lack of occupational health and safety supervision. We must take the lesson learns from the accident cases to prevent the repetition of accident in the future. Therefore the occupational health and safety should be improved to prevent the work related accidents and work related illnesses.
Manifestation of the Nawacita Agenda by the Indonesian President, Joko Widodo is “Increasing the quality of life, productivity, competitiveness, economic independent and national character revolution”. Therefore, the challenge in employment sector is about the quality of human resources, especially in facing the ASEAN Economic Community.
The Implementation of Asean Economic Community will increase the worker mobilization: Indonesian worker to Asean countries and workers from Asean countries to Indonesia. Based on the Data from Indonesian Statistic Agency (BPS) in August 2015, the number of workers in Indonesia is 122.4 million people. Of these, are dominated by the low educational background. The competence of the worker is low due to the low educational background. It becomes the big challenge because the human resource is key factor to survive in facing Asean Economic Community.
On the other hand, increasing the worker’s competence must be followed by the good understanding of occupational health and safety. Occupational health and safety is one of the main aspects in employee protection. In work safety act, Law No 1, 1970, implementation of occupational health and safety is aimed to protect workers safety and health, risk control to assets, machinery and prevent work related accidents and work related illness. This purpose can be achieved if all stakeholders, company, and workers have commitment in the efforts of accident prevention and occupational disease.
In order to promote the implementation of occupational health and safety protection, accident prevention and creating a safe workplace, the best effort that we can do is by implementing the occupational health and safety management system that mandated by the government regulation No 50, 2012 about occupational health and safety management system. The important issued that must be concerned is the new requirement of products and service: a good quality, safe, environmental friendly and fulfill the international standard such as quality management system, environmental management system, and occupational health and safety management system. The requirements must be taken as a challenge and chance to take a success in the free trade era.
The key success of implementation of occupational health and safety need support from all stakeholders to increase the occupational health and safety culture. All stakeholders must take a part such as the government, local government, companies, and employee to take an active role to build an awareness safety culture. If we can build a safety culture through our community, it can prevent the accident and occupational disease and reduce the cost of work related accidents. If the productivity is increasing, it can give contribution to development of national economy.
Based on the problems described above, the Faculty of Public Health will hold a seminar in the field of occupational health and safety with the theme “Improving the Occupational Safety and Health culture to Increase the Quality of Life towards Safe, Health, And Productive Community”
