Not enough qualified safety officers in Sabah – Shareda

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KOTA KINABALU: It is not easy to employ a full time qualified safety officer due to shortage of such officers in the market in Sabah now and the asking salary has gone up to around RM4,000 and above.

Susan receives a memento from Mohd Razak, witnessed by Professor Francis Wong (second right), Lo (right) and Mohammad Nizam during the courtesy visit on Wednesday.

Sabah Housing And Real Estate Developers Association (Shareda) president Datuk Susan Wong Siew Guen said this during a courtesy visit to Department of Occupational Safety and Health Sabah & F.T. Labuan (DOSH) director Ir. Mohd Razak bin Ismail at his office in Wisma PERKESO here on Wednesday.

She said they understand that for a project of more than RM20 million, a full time qualified safety officer is required to be engaged.

Susan said the courtesy visit, jointly made by Shareda and Association of Consulting Engineers Malaysia (ACEM) Sabah Branch, was to familiarize themselves with the safety and health operations procedures of DOSH.

The other members of the courtesy visit delegation were chairman of ACEM Sabah Branch Ir Lo Chong Chiun, technical adviser to KK City Mayor Professor Francis Wong, Shareda executive secretary Ms Salina Lee, Research officer Mr Chong Chen Hau and Mr Peter Woo of Mega Sunwise Sdn Bhd. Also present during the courtesy were deputy director of DOSH Sabah & F.T. Labuan Encik Mohammad Nizam Ali and senior officers of the department.

Meanwhile, Mohd Razak said the shortage of safety officers is only a temporary problem.

He said this problem would soon be overcome as there were many safety training courses for safety and health officers going on.

He said when these safety and health officers completed the course, the employers would easily engage them as there will be abundant supply of them by one more year.

Mohd Razak added, to say that as of now, the salary of the safety officer is higher than the professional engineer, should not be the case.

He also briefed on DOSH “caring” attitude to the workers.

He said the safety of the workers is their concern and their role is aiming to reduce the fatality cases in the construction sites or factories.

“As we all know, the workers are the company’s assets and we should care for them and treat them as individuals with respect,” he pointed out.

The director said fortunately in Sabah, more than 75 per cent of the construction projects have complied with the safety procedures of DOSH and only around 20 per cent are non-compliance.

Mohd Razak said this was very good and he was happy with the results.

There are penalties for non-compliance with these safety procedures, he said, adding that they could be fined RM50,000 or two years’ imprisonment and closing down of operation site if found to be dangerous to the workers.

He encouraged all construction companies to play their role in ensuring the safety of workers and reduce the fatality rate in the work area or factories in order for our country to achieve a developed nation by 2020.

Meanwhile, Professor Francis Wong also complimented Mohd Razak on DOSH safety procedures.

Francis said the safety concepts should initially come from the education sector and encouraged DOSH to highlight this issue by getting the local universities conducting engineering courses to include safety and health procedures as one of their syllabus.

The government departments or Public Works Department (JKR), should also add the item on safety measure in the bill of quantity in their tenders in order to ensure the contractors implement the safety procedures.

Also, the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) should organise more awareness programmes for safety procedures as the safety of the workers is the basic human rights, he added.