Workplace safety must be paramount - CSRM
Atiku Iddrisu | Posted: Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Corporate Social Responsibility Movement (CSRM) an environmental NGO based in Tema has established that the recent fire outbreak at the Tema Port which claimed about 15 lives and destroyed property worth billions of cedis could have been averted if the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) had been a little more responsible in addressing the issue of insecurity of its pipelines.
Executive Secretary of CSRM Mr Richster Amarfio told newsmen in Tema that the purported leakage from a TOR pipeline that led to the fire outbreak was not the first to be recorded, and "may not be the last" if adequate precautionary measures are not well observed.
He said the first major leakage from TOR pipelines in recent years occurred on June 15 1994 in the Chemu Lagoon, where many people on the day in question collected buckets of oil in more than five hours. Since then, Mr Armafio said, there had not been less than five different leakages, all through the Chemu Lagoon.
He said just last year there was another leakage during which people collected gallons of oil and openly sold them out to petroleum dealers.
With the continuous spillages in the Chemu Lagoon, Mr Armarfio said, fish smoking among other domestic activities and the presence of smokers and drug addicts within the Chemu Lagoon catchments area pose a possibility of fire outbreaks.
He said the CSRM at a stakeholders' meeting with TOR, the Port authorities, the Tema Municipal Assembly and the Tema Traditional Council among others on the way forward for the restoration of the Chemu in August 2003, made good recommendations including a decision to eject all squatters along the lagoon and the formation of Safety and Environmental Management Associations by companies.
Sadly, no effort has been made since then, by any of the stakeholders to implement even one of the recommendations, he lamented. Mr Armafio called for an explanation regarding why there was no fire alarm in the port area as well as in that vessel that got burnt.
He said the safety of the employee in Ghana as an inherent component of corporate social responsibility is virtually written off in the fishing industry. He said we did not need to sacrifice about 15 human lives and property worth billions of cedis to remind us on what we need to do to ensure the safety of Ghanaian employees.
He said it is about time steps were taken to ensure that Ghanaian employees are treated as human beings who have dignity, and so, be provided with all safety equipment which are applicable anywhere else in the world.
The issue of workplace safety, he said, must be paramount and called on the factory inspectorate division not to relent in its efforts in addressing it.
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