No inspectors for factories
The over 600 factories and establishments within the Tema Industrial setting do not have adequate factory inspectors to ensure safety and good maintenance practices.
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Currently only four inspectors are in the Tema office of the Department of Factories Inspectorate and they also lack logistics and funding to help them effectively discharge their duties.
These were disclosed by Mr Evans Opare, Senior Factories Inspector at an annual Safety, Health & Environment (SHE) Day celebration organised by the Louis Dreyfus Commodities (LDC) Ghana limited in Tema.
LDC has set aside a day, every year, to celebrate safety awareness at the workplace to ensure that workers focus their attention on the need to create a safe and healthy work environment.
This year’s safety awareness day celebration was on the theme: “Sustainability starts with safety”
Mr Opare bemoaned the lack of resources and logistics for the factory inspectorate and stressed that the situation had greatly limited regular visits to the factories and establishments to enforce safety rules and regulations.
He explained that under normal circumstances, inspectors were expected to visit each factory at least twice a year but due to the logistical challenges they were unable to do that, adding that in some cases for close to two years, they had not visited a factory to inspect their premises.
“At the moment, what we are doing is to improvise by organising training programmes since we are not able to visit all the factories as we ought to do,” he said
He, therefore, appealed for support in the form of logistics and funds to enable it discharge its duties effectively.
Mr Opare underscored the importance of safety in an organisation and encouraged managers of establishments to take keen interest in ensuring a safe working environment for their members of staff.
The Chief Executive of LDC in charge of the West Africa Sub-Region, Mr Robert Dovlo, expressed the hope that employees would incorporate health and safety issues into their output and help the company grow.
“When you breach common sense, you breach safety and hence put everyone else at risk,” he said.