Health, safety, Security, Environment and Standards

Setting the standard for health and safety

Trinidad and Tobago’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSH Act), passed in 2004, and the Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSH Agency), established two years later, are both still relatively wet behind the ears. But in spite of its youth, the OSH Act has already inspired safer workplace practices among a variety of industry stakeholders.

Although the Act itself is law, regulations give companies the legal framework in which to implement the Act’s intentions. Last year, the OSH Agency developed its first set of subsidiary legislation to improve workplace safety, known as the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER).

“LOLER aims to detail comprehensive safety regulations for all lifting equipment used for lifting or lowering loads and/or persons,” said OSH Agency communications specialist Alicia Charles. “The regulations cover a wide range of equipment, including lifts, hoists and mobile elevating work platforms.”

LOLER still needs to be opened up to public consultation before it becomes law. The legislation will apply to all employers, including supervisors and managers, self-employed persons and any employee who uses or has control of the use of lifting equipment, and it will cover factories, construction sites, offshore installations, agriculture premises, offices, shops, hospitals, hotels and places of entertainment.

The Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) was one of the first organisations to draft actual standards based on the Act that companies could follow. In 2008 TTBS declared four voluntary standards that, if implemented, would ensure safer work environments. These standards cover contractor safety management, industrial safety helmets, occupational safety and health risk assessment, and indoor lighting. Other standards are planned, including for industrial safety gloves and footwear and protection from damage to hearing due to noise.

TTBS Standards Officer III and Radiation Safety Researcher Ricardo Rodriguez said, “The feedback we got is that the standards are important but that organisations need some guidance in implementing. So we’ve started to do workshops to help companies implement these standards.”

Rodriguez also highlighted the need to develop standards related to worker exposure to radiation. This is especially important in light of the Alutrint smelter plant planned for construction in La Brea, Trinidad.

“The magnetic field coming from these plants tends to be very high, and it could dangerous,” he said. The OSH Agency, TTBS and the Ministry of Health are currently collaborating to help develop radiation standards.

Energy Industry Gets In On the Safety Train

Another important set of Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) standards developed in 2008 were the energy-related Safe TO Work in Trinidad & Tobago (STOW-TT) standards, developed by the South Trinidad Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Association of Upstream Operators of Trinidad and Tobago and the Point Lisas Energy Association. With STOW-TT, local contractors can all use one set of HSE management standards to prequalify for jobs in the energy industry.

Before STOW-TT, contractors adhered to company-specific HSE standards. This made it more difficult for a wide range of contractors to prequalify for several jobs at a time, because of the prohibitive time and cost involved in qualifying for several different sets of HSE standards. Now the STOW-TT HSE Minimum Requirements is the accepted standard for prequalifying all energy contractors, from oil and gas producers or upstream companies to transporters and primary processors to the downstream petrochemical plants.

Since January 2008, when the STOW-TT implementation board was established, it has worked hard on refining of the STOW-TT Guidance Manual and on engaging other stakeholders in collaboration. The board also hosted a workshop during the American Chamber of Commerce of Trinidad and Tobago’s (AmCham’s) Health, Safety, Security and Environment Conference in September 2008, to educate contractors on how to implement the STOW-TT HSE requirements and on the benefits of the guidelines.

Quality Assurance in Education

It’s not just the energy sector that has improved occupational standards. Along with other regional training agencies, the Trinidad and Tobago National Training Agency (NTA) recently began implementation of the Caribbean Vocational Qualifications (CVQs), a regional certification recognised within CARICOM as a “portable competence-based qualification”, said the NTA in an official statement. According to the NTA, the use of occupational standards in education and training offer the trainee a more relevant certification based on industry-defined standards. These standards define the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by a worker in a specific occupational area. The CVQ is both used as an alternative to and integrated within higher education; it is on par with international models of academic qualifications and includes real-world practical experience.

The CVQ was first implemented in secondary schools in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC). The NTA is now working with 26 other Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutions in training, assessing and certifying graduates with the CVQ, including a partnership with the University of Trinidad and Tobago and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education On-the-Job Training Programme for tertiary level graduates. A number of strategies are also being put in place to support several existing government-run technical and vocational programmes to now award the competency-based certification instead of the plethora of qualifications that now exist.

An SME Focus

Many companies within the HSE sector have realised that, unlike big energy or construction companies, small and medium business enterprises (SMEs) sometimes struggle to implement safer procedures, predominantly because they lack financial and human resources to do so. AmCham’s Health, Safety, Security and Environment Conference included several workshops specifically targeted towards assisting SMEs to reach higher standards of occupational health and safety.

“AmCham’s annual HSSE conference is the only conference of its kind nationally,” said the AmCham HSE Committee. “It’s definitely key in terms of national awareness of HSE development. We always include workshop and training sessions to ensure that the participants have an opportunity for one-on-one discussion, and we wanted to extend the target audience to include SMEs.”

With initiatives like this, and further development of OSH legislation, high HSE standards will become the norm in Trinidad and Tobago industry. And, according to Rodriguez, Trinidad and Tobago should start looking outward to influence the region.

“We are ahead of the Caribbean in realising how important HSE is in the workplace,” Rodriguez said. “And T&T should pioneer the drive to help other countries in the region become more HSE compliant. We need to think on a world line.”

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