Occupational Health & Safety

· Each year over 120 people are killed at work and a further 5, 000 suffer serious injury

The OHS Officer at Swan Hill District Health and states "it’s my role to prevent accident and injury".

How do we prevent accidents?
· The Occupational Health and Safety Act states that the Employer must provide a safe workplace and the employee must work in a safe manner.

· In order to prevent accidents we need to identify, assess and control the risks.  So its important for all employers to identify what the risks are, for example;
· Manual handling
· Hazardous substances
· Noise
· Machinery
· Working at heights, ladders, on roofs etc

Then we assess if they are risks that need to be addressed, if so

Then we need to control them, can we eliminate, isolate, substitute and lastly use Personal Protective Clothing/Equipment.  Training and supervision is also crucial to ensure that employees are educated to work in a safe manner and ensure they do work as instructed.

Every workplace in our community whether it is a shop, farm, hospital, hairdresser, library etc needs to identify and control their risks to prevent accidents.

Information on OHS in all industries is available from the Victorian WorkCover Authority can call the Bendigo Office on 5443-8866 or look up their site at www.workcover.vic.gov.au

Details are listed under contacts.