EMPLOYERS NEED TO IMPROVE MANAGEMENT OF WORKERS` SAFETY AND HEALTH

PUTRAJAYA, Dec 22 (Bernama) -- Employers in all sectors are urged to improve
the management of their workers' safety and health to avoid a loss in the
country's high skilled human capital.

Malaysian Deputy prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the move was necessary
to ensure the government's strategy, initiative and the Economic Transformation
Programme (ETP), including efforts to produce 3.3 million trained and skilled
workers by 2020, could be achieved.

He said it was also to avoid the country having to bear high cost for using
limited resources to ensure all the projections were achieved.

He said it would be a huge loss to the country to lose high skilled human
capital due to accidents at work or occupation-related illnesses.

"If this happens, all expenses incurred and efforts made to produce trained
and skilled workers will be futile. The situation will force us to provide
additional allocation to train new workers to have similar skills within a short
period," he added.


He said this in his speech at the presentation of the National Workers'
Safety and Health Excellence Award at the Putrajaya International Convention
Centre here Tuesday night.

Muhyiddin said that based on the "Malaysian Quality of Life" report, there
was a 33-point increase in the Malaysian workers' quality of life between 1990
and 2007.

"This increase reflects that Malaysia is always concerned about the workers'
welfare by providing a conducive work environment that is safe to all workers.

"This can be seen from the drop of 7.75 accident cases at the work place in
2004 to 5.59 cases for every 1,000 workers in 2009," he added.