Health and Safety Inspectors’ Pay
November 12th, 2008Health and Safety Inspectors of the Department of Labour should be paid more. That was the opinion of Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Tuesday. He said that Health and Safety Inspectors have the duty of ensuring adherence to labour laws in various sectors and should be paid in line with their responsibilities.
Minister Mdladlana was addressing the media at the Construction Summit hosted by the Department of Labour in Johannesburg on Tuesday. The summit was arranged to discuss the growing number of fatalities and the state of Health and Safety in the construction sector.
With regards to the Health and Safety inspectors, minister Mdladlana said while he was hoping to increase their remuneration. The Department of Labour was working on increasing the number of inspectors employed there.
There are currently about 800 inspectors at the Department of Labour and they are looking at recruiting 300 additional inspectors.
The recruitment of more inspectors are a priority at the Department as the Minister set aside R690 million of the departments R1. 7 billion budget to recruit more inspectors. “We intend to similarly improve the competency levels of our inspectors for better enforcement of our laws,” he said at the time of his Budget speech.
The Construction Health and Safety summit was attended by various stakeholders from the construction industry. The aims of the Health and Safety summit was to:
- Set targets to reduce the number of fatalities in the Construction sector,
- To raise awareness about Health and Safety issues on construction sites,
- To decide on measures to reduce the number of Health-related injuries and deaths as well as to
- Put together a Health and Safety strategy to deal with incidents in line with the Occupational Health and Safety Accord.
The Health and Safety accord was signed between the Department of Labour, business and labour unions in 2002 and it seeks to reduce the high number of work-related incidents and to promote the establishment of healthy and safe working environments.
This accord requires of organisations to take a fresh look at the evaluation of Health and Safety programmes.
Source: BuaNews
By Edwin Tshivhidzo
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