Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
He said that while there was a significant decline in industrial accidents
reported to Socso and the Labour Department since 1995, it is still not up to
par with the benchmark of developed countries.
<p>The average number of industrial accidents was 17 per 1,000 workers in 1995
but dwindled to 6.7 last year. The average for developed countries, according
to Lee, was three to four accidents per 1,000 workers.</p>
<p>"Companies should regard occupational safety and health as part of their
corporate responsibility and must allocate yearly budget for safety training
to help prevent work-related accidents," Bernama quoted him as saying.</p>
<p>Lee stressed that training programmes are essential in achieving the goal of
a safe workplace.</p>
<p>"An accident-free environment helps the company to save and increase the
organisation’s productivity and profitability. Companies must not profit at
the expense of safety because if accidents occur, lives may be lost and productivity
will be affected," he said.</p>
<p><b>Train doctors</b></p>
<p>Lee also lamented that only 13 per cent of over 4,000 Socso panel doctors currently
were trained in occupational health.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Socso statistics showed that only a minuscule amount of compensated
cases were related with occupational diseases.</p>
<p>"These figures show a lack of awareness on occupational diseases among
medical practitioners and the industries," he said.</p>
<p>Lee also called for more efforts to enhance doctor’s knowledge on occupational
safety, as the present ratio of Occupational Health Doctor (OHD) per working
population in Malaysia was only one to 46,000 workers.
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