|
 
 
 
 
|
“Culturally, We Lack A Mindset
For Safety.”
Tahseen Hassan is a senior trainer and consultant
working for Occupational Safety & Loss Prevention International
(OSALP). He has been working in the field of quality, health,
safety and environment in and outside Pakistan for the last 13
years. Sci-tech World talks to him about the various aspects of
health, safety and environment (HSE) in Pakistan.
Q
Keeping in perspective the fire incidents that keep happening in
Pakistan, what is the most common factor that leads to these
disasters?
A
Commitment, leadership and accountability of the top management
are key factors in preventing HSE disasters at the workplace. If
the top management is not convinced, unaware of the benefit of
having HSE systems in place or are not trained, disasters will
keep on happening.
Leaders have many priorities, including revenues and profits,
employee’s issues, marketing and legal issues, etc. Due to
these, HSE sometimes tends to be ignored. They need to be aware
of the fact that their organisation maybe in line for a big
disaster if HSE is ignored and eventually the losses that may
occur will be much more than what would have been spent on
prevention.
Q
You have conducted trainings and audits at various private and
government organisations in Pakistan. How do you evaluate the
fire safety and awareness capability of these sectors?
A
Fire prevention and mitigation are two separate control
measures. The main focus should be to prevent a fire from
starting in the first place through proactive action. Trainings
of employees, making employees aware of the preventive measures
to stop an incident and carrying out risk assessments are part
of it. Organisations lack a high degree of control in these
preventive measures.
Fire mitigation is all what you do once the fire starts. Fire
fighting equipment, emergency evacuation and fire crew all come
under this. Multinational organisations, as compared to
government organisations, both here and abroad, have a
reasonably good control on fire fighting systems. But even
abroad we have seen that though the equipment was present, its
proper usage was not known to the workers. Even the best fire
fighting equipment cannot prevent fire from starting. The
approach has to be proactive prevention, rather than fighting
fires
Q
We have seen good services such as Rescue 1122 coming up and
some improvement in fire safety. What more needs to be done at
the governmental level to achieve the minimum desirable level of
fire safety nationwide?
A
Culturally, we lack a mindset for safety. We need to get the HSE
in the school curriculum that would make a big difference for
our generations to come. Our children need to be trained on the
importance of health and safety.
Just imagine children all over Pakistan learning the very basic
HSE aspects and then trying to implement it at home. This would
bring about a cultural change. We will see youngsters teaching
their parents about things the parents did not learn even after
becoming educated. This will have a substantial long-term
impact.
Besides this, media campaigns and mandatory fire training and
safety days at all organisations would also serve as good
measures.
Q
How do you evaluate the local scenario in terms of the choice of
suppliers for fire safety equipment, availability of equipment
and the price.
A
There are good institutions in Pakistan that are supplying fire
safety equipment. Though the price of some of these advance
firefighting equipment might be very high, the profit and the
revenue lost from a fire incident is much higher.
Again, the real spirit lies in preventing the fire in the first
place. You can have the best first aid kit in the house to treat
a child’s burns but the damage has been done already. In fact
the idea is to train and put preventive measures so that the
child does not get burnt in the first place.
The focus and investment, thus, needs to be on fire prevention
and not just firefighting. To promote a fire-safe culture, the
government should consider encouraging imports of fire safety
equipment by changing the duties and taxes structure.
— U.A
|
