Mauritius: Workshop focuses on the Ratification of the Convention on Occupational Safety and Health

A three-day tripartite workshop on the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention 2006 (C187) opened yesterday at the Gold Crest Hotel in Quatre Bornes in the presence of an expert from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Mr. Franklin K. Muchiri.

An initiative of the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment in collaboration with the ILO, the workshop aims to sensitize the different stakeholders on the provisions of the Convention, which was adopted in 2006 to promote occupational safety and health as part of ILO's agenda of decent work for all. Convention 187 also stresses the importance of continuous promotion of a national preventive safety and health culture.

Participants, mostly representatives from the Employers' organisations, Workers' organisations and the Government, will examine and identify ways and means of implementing the provisions of the Convention with a view to making every workplace safer and healthier. Convention 187 adopted by the ILO in 2006 aims at ensuring that members ratifying the Convention take appropriate steps towards achieving progressively a safer and healthier working environment through national programmes on Occupational Safety and Health which consists of, a national policy, a national system, a national programme and a national profile.

Addressing the participants, the Minister of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment, Mr. Shakeel Mohamed, recalled that Mauritius had achieved considerable progress regarding Occupational Safety over the years and that almost all the provisions mentioned in the Convention 187 are adhered to in the country in addition to several measures already in place for compliance with the Convention. In this regard, Minister Mohamed added that Mauritius has already formulated a national Occupational Safety and Health profile with the assistance of the ILO and a national Occupational Safety and Health programme and that the Government is providing the necessary tools to raise the standards of occupational safety and health in the country.

Minister Mohamed further pointed out that the challenges facing the professionals in the field of occupational safety and health are real hence the need to enhance efforts to make the workplace safer and healthier.

It will be recalled that in Mauritius, the Government came up, in April this year, with the Occupational Safety and Health (Scaffold) Regulations to ensure better safety standards in the use of scaffolds. Risk Assessment guidelines have also been issued to enable employers to comply with their legal obligations under the Occupational Safety and Health Act 2005.

According to the ILO estimates the annual losses resulting from the work-related injuries in terms of compensation, lost work-days, interruptions of production, training and retraining, medical expenses amount to over 4 percent of the total Gross National Product of all countries across the world.