In his inaugural address at a national workshop on functioning of safety committees in India here on Friday, he said that India headed the list of accidents at the workplace, both in terms of numbers and frequency. Stating that so far only 125 PSUs had involved workers in their management, he pointed out that the results would have been much better if there was some audit in this regard.

The workshop was organised by the International Labour Organisation and Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA). Mishra criticised the safety standards employed in the industries with 100 per cent FDI. "The workers in these industries are not aware of the risks they face while using imported technologies," he said. In his address, Igor Fodotov of International Labour Organisation said that compensation foroccupational hazards in factories was more than 10 times the amount needed for providing for safety at the shopfloor. But still shopfloors were unhealthy and unsafe with little attention paid to workers' safety. He said two-thirds of accidents at workplace could be checked through proper intervention.

Mishra also unveiled a report on the Functioning of Safety Committees in India, conducted by PRIA in collaboration with the ministry of labour at the workshop.The study is based on a survey conducted among 328 safety committee members, from 47 different industries. Of these industries, 81.4 per cent belonged to public enterprise, 17.1 per cent were from defence production sector, 0.6 per cent were private sector employees and 0.9 per cent were working with the central government undertaking units. The study points out that safety committees in their present form have little say in the decisions related to health and safety. The trade unions can play a pivotal role in the formation of safety committees inindustry, it says.

The study underlines the scope of rotation of members of these committees since the survey found that these had the same members year after year. This led to restricted safety committee participation.