THE DISASTER AT SYARIKAT GEMILANG Ahmad was exhausted. He had a bad headache caused by the stress of what had been a very long day. As factory Manager, he was responsible for the production of all Syarikat Gemilang’s products and 200 production workers. The company mostly made steel filing cabinets, which sold very well, as well as few other minor items such as metal safes for the home consumer. The company used to have Safety and Health officer, but after he had resigned six months ago, the position had remained vacant. The night before, Ahmad had received a telephone call from a night- shift supervisor at 4.00 am, asking him to come to work as there had been a bad accident. When he arrived 30 minute later, he was briefed by supervisor on what had happened. A worker on a metal cutting machine had slipped on a pool of oil, which had leaked from the machine. In trying to stop his fall, he had grabbed onto the machine, which clamped down on his hand, cutting off two fingers on his right hand in the process and mangling the hand badly. The supervisor had called the nearest hospital for an ambulance as the worker was losing a lot of blood, but the ambulance had taken nearly 35 minutes to arrive. In the meantime, the workers continued to bleed and no one knew what to do to help him. All the other workers had stopped their machines after the accident, as they were not in the mood to continue working. The supervisor had not ordered them back to work, especially as two of the women in the same section were semi-hysterical. Later the morning, Ahmad had conducted a preliminary investigation into the accident and had reported the incident to the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH). He knew that they would send out an officer to investigate and he wanted to be ready for any questions they might ask. He also realized that in the last 12 months, the company had neglected the safety of its workers in the interests of ensuring the workers achieved the production targets set for them. He suspected that DOSH might even issue a stop-work order, which would really upset the company’s Chief Executive Officer, as they had a huge number of cabinets to be completed in the next month for a customer who had promised them further orders if they could deliver on time according to specification. Ahmad had prepared a list of issues that could have led to the accident. They included the following:

1. The victim had been performing maximum overtime for the last two months and had volunteered for the night-shift, because he earned a higher rate of pay when he worked at night.

2. The victim had only been with company for three months and, so far he had not attended any safety training.

3. Many of the workers in the cutting section did not wear the gloves provided to them by the company. They complained that the material made their skin unbearably itchy. Ahmad had also checked the records of the company’s Safety and Health Committee. The last meeting was held five months ago! He did not look forward to the visit from the DOSH Officer, which was expected any time now.

questions;

. i. Syarikat Gemilang does not comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 in a number of ways. Identify them with detail explanation. (8 marks

Justify frequencies of safety committee meeting according to Occupational Safety and Health act 1994.(4 marks

iii. Recommend preventive actions that organization should do to reduce numbers of workplace accident.(8 marks