Safe Maintenance is the theme of this year’s European Week for Safety and Health at Work, which is currently taking place in over 30 European countries. This week-long campaign, which is organised by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), advocates proper maintenance in order to keep work-related accidents and health problems to a minimum.
As part of this campaign, the Occupational Health and Safety Authority in Malta, OHSA-Malta, organised a seminar on Safe Maintenance, which was attended by Minister for Health, the Elderly and Community Care Joe Cassar, and by Dr Mark Gauci, OHSA-Malta’s CEO. Guest speaker Tim Tregenza, from EU-OSHA, gave an overview of the European Agency’s mission “to make Europe’s workplaces safer, healthier and more productive”.
During the seminar, entitled “Occupational Health & Safety Good Practice Award 2010-2011”, was presented to 10 companies and organisations in recognition of their commitment to make their workplace safer for their employees. These organisations participated in the European Good Practice Award by submitting a total of 13 examples of good practice, some of which were presented to the participants and the media during the event.
Commenting on the seminar and on the award, Dr Gauci said, “Although unfortunately there are still cases where health and safety at work are still being neglected, we took this opportunity to convey a positive message by giving recognition to these entities for their commitment towards a safer work environment.”
Dr Cassar commended these enterprises for implementing innovative maintenance procedures so as to eliminate workplace hazards, thus providing safer and healthier working conditions. He said that “these companies should serve as role models, while their good practices should be emulated by other enterprises.” He added that “these organisations merit this prestigious award”.
The European Good Practice Award is one of the several initiatives that EU-OSHA is organising during this week-long Pan-European campaign aiming at raising awareness on the importance of proper maintenance. For the scope of this campaign, maintenance has been regarded as either a preventive (or proactive) measure or else as a corrective (or reactive) procedure. Preventive maintenance is carried out to keep equipment and machines in good, working order, while corrective maintenance is carried out on faulty equipment and machines to repair or restore them.
An independent panel will nominate two of these 10 companies to compete for the European Good Practice Award at European level.
For further information about European Week and related events, visit the campaign site, http://hw.osha.europa.eu. Information on the National Agency for Health and Safety at Work (OSHA-Malta) can be obtained from http://www.ohsa.org.mt.