A safety reminder for the holiday season from the State Mining Engineer Andrew Chaplyn
| Date: | Tuesday, 20 December 2016 |
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The festive season is upon us - a time of year spent with friends, family and loved ones. Sadly, for some connected to the mining industry, it is a reminder of loss and hardship.
As outlined in the recently released Safety Performance report, four people were killed while working at Western Australian mining operations in 2015-16, and a further 319 people suffered a serious injury.
While safety is improving compared with a decade ago, we cannot and should not accept the current number of fatalities and injuries.
We must learn from these tragedies and do everything we can to avoid them being repeated.
Earlier this year the department released the third instalment of the Know your Hazardsvideo series, focusing on the risks associated with getting caught, trapped or crushed.
I encourage everyone in the mining industry to watch these short videos and implement the advice in your workplace.
Take the time to think about your safety, even if it’s a task you’ve done a hundred times before. It only takes a momentary lapse in applying risk controls for a tragedy to occur.
The department is committed to thoroughly investigating incidents to provide safety information to the industry, which helps protect workers and safeguard the community.
Whether you are an executive, manager, supervisor, worker or regulator, we all have a critical role to play in improving safety in Western Australia’s mining industry.
It is a role we all need to make our highest priority, because the costs of not doing so are far too high.
I wish everyone involved in Western Australia’s mining industry a happy, enjoyable and, most importantly, safe festive season and New Year.
