Therefore, comprehensive analysis of technology application and human factors identify potential accident and safety risks. Integrating ergonomic and other control measures in planning and design help reduce capital cost, compensation and operational delays.
- Demographic trend - A steady transformation is taking place from the traditional agriculture-dependent nation to a non-agriculture dependent one. While the percentage of the total working population has changed marginally, the number of working population has increased tremendously. Today, we have a workforce of about 311 million with about 110 million in the industrial sector. During the next decade, a large number of younger populations will join the workforce and only a small segment (i.e., the older population) will go out of the workforce. The employment pattern of women from household to industry and other sectors is fast changing.
Social awareness - The changing scenario at work has brought about an impact on the lifestyle of people whereby the public has become sensitized by the environmental changes. Being a populous nation, with limited economic resources, countries like ours are face-to-face with stark realities of the challenges in the world of work in transforming hard occupational health problems to soft occupational health problems, which are gift of modern society. Their combined influence on health and the well being of people has much greater impact today than before.
Conclusion: Although industrial accident research in India is still in infancy, there is concern among the enlightened industrial organisations about the imbalance between technological demand and human characteristics leads to low technical utilisation, costly maintenance and frequent human failures. The voluntary industry initiatives are evident on their subscribing to the Bureau of Indian Standards and International Standards Organization for quality assurance, as well as occupational health and environmental management.
A change in attitude towards prevention and promotion of occupational health is visible. It has been seen that there is no treatment, which is effective against the potential hazards encountered at workplaces. The only treatment of value comprises education and training on the potential risks, and modification of work conditions, including engineering and administrative measures. Recent trends amply suggest the scope of national and international collaboration to forge a voluntary industry initiative on strategic OHS and environmental management, insurance planning, risk assessment, ergonomics and work design.
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| Posted : 10/21/2005 |
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