Industrial Safety

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30171, 1 July 1963, Page 10

Industrial Safety

The recent comment by Mr C. P. Collins, district superintendent of the Labour Department, on the incidence and causes of industrial accidents was disturbing. During the last few years government and private agencies have tried conscientiously to reduce the toll of such accidents. Publicity campaigns, the training of safety officers, and the safety education of factory workers have been undertaken by the Labour Department and the National Safety Association. A particularly regrettable ti end has been the increase in accidents to young workers, of whom more than 35’1.000 are expected to enter New Zealand industry during the present decade. The co-operation

of employers and employees is always essential to -maintain safe systems of work. Accidents, besides causing personal injury, reduce industrial production and cumulatively affect the national welfare. The Labour Department’s 1962 report emphasised that, although the annual total of compensation and damages payments appeared U be decreasing, “there is '• no room for complacency,

“ and the hard fact remains “ that occupational accidents “still occur in far too great *' a number ”. Many of these accidents can be prevented by common sense; and in other circumstances all that is required to eliminate danger is a simple code of sefety precautions.