We are nothing after our death. Let us donate our body organs for the poor.

Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work The moment you fear, you are nobody - Swamy Vivekananda

If you think safety is expensive, try an accident... - O.P.Kharbanda

Preventable accidents, if they are not prevented due to our negligence, it is nothing short of a murder - Dr. Sarvepalli Radha Krishna, 2nd President of India

Zero accidents through zero unsafe behaviors. Do not be complacent that there are no accidents. There may be near miss accidents (NMAs). With luck/chance, somebody escaped knowingly or unknown to the person. But, we can't be safe, if we depend upon the luck.

Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.

We make No compromise with respect to Morality, Ethics, or Safety. If a design or work practice is perceived to be unsafe, we do not proceed until the issue is resolved. - Mission statement by S&B Engineers & Consultants Ltd. http://www.sbec.com/safety/

Human meat gets least priority - A doctor's comment on accidents

CSB video excerpts from Dr.Trevor Kletz, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQn5fL62KL8

Dec 14, 2013

Ensuring use of PPE (personal protective equipment) by employees - whose responsibility?

Recently, in a conversation during an audit, I heard the following instructions to supervisors and employees about the use of PPE:
  1. Tell the shopfloor incharge to check for wearing safety shoes by all as there are some visitors.
  2. Tomorrow, audit team is coming. Tell everybody to wear safety shoes and goggles.
  3. Arey baba, wear shoes. Otherwise, we will get non-conformity (NC) by the audit team.
  4. If you don't wear safety shoe, unnecessarily, safety man will write letter.
  5. etc
The above will only show (shoe) that we have to wear safety gear only to please somebody and that the manager will not get any remarks from visitors or audit / inspection team. Nobody thinks that PPE are required for our own safety. The way we wear our clothes without being told by anybody, why don't we tell that PPE are required to protect our body parts, but NOT to protect the skin of plant manager / supervisor.

This shows that though we shout from roof top that safety is our first priority, it is, in fact first from last. It is in a way, an abusive word. Or, hatred term. Some managers may even have hatredness by seeing the safety persons even from distance and may be cursing the fellow.

In such organisations, who can save the workmen. Even GOD can not save them, as they want to inflict injuries to their own workmen from whom they want to get better production. 

Here, even workmen should be blamed for not wearing PPE. Else, why one should tell or keep on telling wear this, wear that, and so on. Don't they know? Supervisors / managers / safety officers should only do monitoring job to correct the mistakes made unknowingly, not to tell everyday same thing to those who do not want to follow. Such persons should be removed from the work. Then only, others can be protected. Otherwise, youngsters who join the organization may pick up or learn the work to do in a wrong way. 

Here, the issue is not about wearing only safety shoe or helmet or something else. This way of working leads to wrong work practices and poor safety culture. 

And an expert defined safety culture as the way we work (or do things), even when nobody is watching.

Dec 8, 2013

Starting problem with vehicle not used for some time

I am having scooter which I sparingly use as I my regular use vehicle is a motor cycle. Today, I gave my motor cycle for servicing and I had the problem of starting my scooter. When I took it to mechanic, he examined and on enquiry with me about its use, told me that we should not leave petrol in the vehicle which is not in use for a long time. Instead, he suggested to fill the petrol as and when required and use it. He said that the evaporation of petrol coupled with degradation of lubricating oil which will be mixed with it during filling leads to this starting problem.
Another problem I find with battery start vehicles is discharge of battery.

This is a lesson learned today.

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