Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE government has instructed steel industries to convene a joint meeting to discuss and agree on a particular common technology to use when filtering scraps and detecting contained explosives to avoid accidents in factories.
The steel industries reprocess the scraps to make various iron products, but the raw materials sometimes contain explosives that cause accidents in factories.
Deputy Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (Labour, Youths and Employment), Mr Patrobas Katambi, issued the directive when he visited some steel industries in Mkuranga District, Coast region.
He toured Fujian Hexingwang Company and Lodhia Group of Companies for the major purpose of following up on implementation of directives for improving work environment issued recently by the Occupational Safety and Health Authority (OSHA).
“All steel processing industries should sit together and find out a single technology that would be used to identify explosives in order to avoid accidents caused by unwanted raw materials,” Mr Katambi said, adding that “the explosives have been the source of many accidents claiming lives of Tanzanians.”
OSHA’s Acting Chief Executive Officer Khadija Mwenda, who accompanied the deputy minister to the industries, said the authority issued the directive to steel industries after it had investigated an accident that killed two workers at the Fujian Hexingwang factory.
Despite the directives following the incidence, the industry remained adamant to implement the directives to the satisfactory level.
“We have come to see how the directives have been implemented so that we can allow the industries to resume operations, but we have noticed that they have not yet implemented them due to poor knowledge on issues we had told them to,” Ms Mwenda said.
As a way forward, the OSHA decided that it would bring its experts to guide owners of industry on how to put in place systems for safety and health at workplace before it allows them to resume activities.
She also said OSHA currently conducts the riskbased inspections.So far it has done it in some sectors including mining, financial sector and social security schemes. Such inspections are now ongoing in steel industries countrywide.
After completing the inspections, the authority would prepare a report for sharing with other authorities, including the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Investment so that when they craft policies and laws they should consider needs for investors to put in place systems for safety and health at workplaces.
One of the employees of the Fujian Hexingwang steel industry expressed his disappointment over his employer’s failure to observe guidelines on safety and health at workplace.
