Tata Steel official lays stress on safety as a behavioural issue

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Organisations that are not able to bring about a change in their people's behaviour towards safety practices are liable to face stringent compensation laws, like the recently enacted Corporate Manslaughter & Corporate Homicide Act 2007 in the UK and similar acts in some European countries.

Tata Steel head (safety) Manoranjan Prasad addressed CII Jharkhand chapter members here Wednesday at a seminar on 'occupational health & safety.'

Prasad spoke on the importance of behavioural safety as a tool to manage people. He said the manslaughter & homicide Act, under which companies and other organisations can be prosecuted for failure to manage health and safety with fatal consequences, could soon be a reality in this country too.

Prasad laid stress on safety as a behavioural issue that could not be put off. He said all injuries were preventable provided each person in the organisation behaved responsibly.

Prasad said it would be wise to implement safety practices in the workplace rather than pay huge compensation for fatal accidents, as recommended in the Corporate Manslaughter & Corporate Homicide Act.

The new European act was created to deal with very serious management failures.

The offence is now considerably wider in scope than overcoming the two problems of common law---that of "identification" and "aggregation"---in relation to incorporated bodies, and it now includes liability for organisations, which could not previously be prosecuted for manslaughter.

Tata Steel, among the best steel companies in the world, is trying hard to catch up with the industry benchmark safety standard of a loss time injury frequency rate of 0.4 set by Australia-based BlueScope Steel.

According to Prasad, the steel major, which has just started implementing the "process safety" concept at its works here, wants to bring down its loss time injury frequency rate from the present 1.7 to that set by BlueScope.

Tata Steel has been taking an all-inclusive approach to the issue of safety. It has been including its contractors' workforce too in its safety training programmes and drives.

The company spends around Rs 4 crore annually on buying safety appliances.

"Compliance with rules & regulations can achieve only 50% safety in an organisation, while management quality systems can improve it to 70%. But a behavioural and cultural change can achieve 100% safety," said Prasad.