Crowds gather after part of the Sailing Tower Hotel collapsed in the central province of Ha Tinh, killing a woman and injuring eight others in October. According to the Work Safety Bureau, about 3,500 workplace accidents occurred in the first half of 2011. (Photo: VNS)Greater awareness among employees and employers and heavier punishments for violations are needed to improve work place safety in the country, experts say.

Employers in particular had to take more responsibility for providing safe working conditions, they said.

Despite recent improvements, the number of work place accidents have tended to increase.

According to the Work Safety Bureau, more than 3,500 workplace accidents have happened in the first half of this year, injuring over 3,600 people, a year-on-year increase of nearly 36 per cent. Property damage because of the accidents is estimated at over VND143 billion (over US$6.8 million).

Fatalities in workplace accidents have been particularly high in the manufacturing industry, mining and construction sectors. The manufacturing industry accounts for more than 27 per cent of workplace fatalities, followed by mining and construction with 21.6 per cent.

The rate of people injured in workplace accidents, according to the Ministry of Health's Preventive Medicine Department, is 7.06 per 1,000.

Meanwhile, experts say that the number of accidents that have happened is much higher than official estimates because not all localities have filed accurate reports.

Only half of the localities nationwide send timely reports on workplace accidents within their area and just 2 to 5per cent of the enterprises report their workplace accidents, local media reports cited the experts saying.

Vu Nhu Van, deputy head of the Work Safety Bureau, said there were enterprises who did not report workplace accidents because they negotiated compensation privately with the victims' families.

The number of workplace accidents in the agricultural sector was quite high but not reported as the farmers were not on the State's payroll, said Tran Ngoc Lan, deputy head of the Medical Environment Management Department under the Ministry of Health.

Studies done by the Health Ministry have found that many enterprises did not pay attention to ensuring workplace safety by investing in proper protective gear and providing training for their workers.

In fact, workers themselves did not attach sufficient importance to protect themselves, the studies found. Both employers and employees seemed to give greater priority to productivity than workplace safety.

The Ha Noi-based Viet Duc Hospital received around 10 people seriously injured in workplace accidents each day, said Nguyen Xuan Vinh, who is in charge of the hospital's cardiology department.

Vinh said not many local enterprises have co-operated with the health sector to provide training on basic labour safety for their workers.

He said work safety awareness must be increased among both employers and employees, and companies violating safety regulations must be strictly penalised.

Concurring with Vinh, Lan said the punishment currently meted out to those who violated worker safety regulations was meagre and should be increased.

The compensation given by companies in case a worker is killed in a workplace accident should be more realistic, Lan said.

For example, if a 20-year-old worker dies in a workplace accident, the company should pay the victim's family an amount of money equal to 40 years of labour that the worker would have put in had he been alive.

Source: VNS