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Occupational safety
ASIDE from wages, there’s another concern confronting the labor sector – occupational safety, or the lack of it. Now here’s one good news, especially to workers in the manufacturing and construction sector: the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has finally enforced Department Order (DO) 154 series of 2016 (Safety and Health Standards on the Use and Management of Asbestos in the Workplace).
According to the Associated Labor Unions, in 2012 alone there were 1.3 million construction, manufacturing and automobile and motor pit stop workers in the Philippines exposed daily to asbestos dust. The DO was issued on April 21 yet but was enforced only beginning this Oct. 21. The Occupational Safety and Health Center of DOLE introduced this policy to ensure the protection of asbestos workers and communities from direct and indirect exposure to cancerous asbestos and asbestos-containing materials.
The World Health Organization says all types of asbestos cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs). There are currently about 125 million people in the world exposed to asbestos at the workplace. Several thousands of deaths can be attributed to other asbestos-related diseases as well as non-occupational exposures to asbestos.
DOLE’s new policy guarantees the protection, treatment and rehabilitation of asbestos workers and minimizes exposure of communities from the risk of direct and secondary exposure to highly toxic asbestos dust and asbestos containing materials. Asbestos awareness in the country heightened after 1,542 of the more than 10,000 workers from the US naval base in Subic were screened from 1992 to 1996. During this period alone, 587 workers were found to have incurable asbestos exposure-related diseases.
According to the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, 58 countries already banned asbestos due to its deaths and incurable diseases it causes to humans. Perhaps the Philippines can pursue that direction, too, to protect its workers and Filipinos in general.
The Duterte administration has started reforming the labor sector by finding ways to end contractualization and proposing higher wages. It might as well add to these reforms the occupational safety of the country’s labor force.
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