Safety body focuses on porters, labourers on trucks

Jun 02, 2009 News

The National Advisory Council of Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH), is concerned about the lack of safe accommodation for labourers and porters on Lorries and other vehicles.
Chairman of the Council, Dale Beresford, said that this concern had been expressed to the Ministry of Labour, with a request for a more energetic policing of this aspect of occupational safety of this category of workers.
He made this comment recently, in relation to the recent death by accident of one such worker on a motor lorry, in West Coast Berbice.
In the case in point, the worker had been employed by the owner of a hardware store, and his job had been to load items bought by customers, onto a lorry, and offload same at various points along the Coast.
The lorry on which he worked on that day, May 8 last, was not equipped with protective side rails, and after loading the vehicle, the Porter sat on a piece of plywood on top of the goods.
Along the way, a gust of wind blew the sheet of plywood upward and the porter, aged 19, was thrown off the moving lorry and onto the public road.
The teenager was later identified as Premchand Harriprashad, aka Ravi. He was picked up in an unconscious state, and subsequently died from the injuries he sustained.
Commenting on the fatal incident, Beresford said that NACOSH was totally opposed to workers being exposed to such hazardous conditions while on the job.
He observed that the sad fact, was that many workers on lorries and agricultural equipment, both on the Coast and in the hinterland, were primarily concerned with earning an income.
“They are concerned with getting a dollar to the point of either ignoring the danger, or hoping for the best,” he said.
He added that in such circumstances, porters could fall off a vehicle, and the driver will continue driving, completely unaware that something bad had happened.
He said that NACOSH was concerned about employers placing the job above the safety of their workers.
He stressed that there were rules designed to protect porters and labourers who travel on vehicles, for the purpose of loading or offloading goods from these vehicles.
“The specific West Berbice incident has been raised with the Ministry of Labour. We have asked them to investigate this, and we are hoping for more energetic policing, with respect to the working conditions of this category of workers,” he said.

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Safety body focuses on porters, labourers on trucks

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