Daewoo violations "unbelievable" | Global Maritime Social Network

Daewoo violations "unbelievable"

Written by TVT Marine Monday, 08 February 2010 04:28

It was revealed last week that Korean major shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) has numerous flaws in its safety measures.

After Korean Ministry of Labor started conducting the special safety supervision on DSME, more than 1,200 cases of violation of the industrial health and safety act have been found.

The labor ministry formed a special task force which is made up of 30 national experts including a labor supervisor in charge of the industrial health and safety after the recent fatal accidents at DSME took lives of four workers in succession. The task force carried out the special supervision since January 25th.

In the process of the supervision ended on Feb. 5th, the task force has researched on the actual condition of the yard sites and prepared measures including jurisdictional ones based on the violation cases of the industrial health and safety act.

If the task force detects any suspicious cases, the task force will give a chance to the company to explain the whole thing. Then the cases will be excluded from the violation list as long as the explanation is regarded as reasonable.

An official from the Labor Ministry said, “The number of the violation cases uncovered is not important: the core task is to fathom out the exact causes of problems and figure out how to solve the problems.

He continued, “Although DSME has been making various efforts like consulting outside safety-specialized institutions, the tension needed in the industrial sites has diminished as the company has maintained the creditors’ management system for a long time. Therefore, the task force is leery about whether the company lays aside the safety to take care solely of orders it obtained.

Based on the results of the supervision and investigation, the ministry seems to ask DSME to improve the facilities at the yard and remedy the problems found after diagnosing even the cultural aspect of the company including the safety management and management methods.

Last year six workers died from industrial accidents at DSME and accordingly in September 2009, Tongyeong branch of Busan local labor ministry implemented the special supervision of the company.

Meanwhile, the labor union of DSME and representatives from the Metal Union shipbuilding division held a press conference where they urged the ministry to take responsibility for the grave disasters occurred at shipyards.

The union members demanded: abolishing the policy on self-health/safety in the shipbuilding industry, inspecting whether yard sites have the person in charge of the health and safety, punishing the head of the sites when severe accidents happen, building up a practical safety-management system at the yards, supervising the sites regularly and continuously, and organizing a labor-government prevention team of industrial disaster.

The union lamented that the rate of the industrial disaster in the shipbuilding industry was 1.5% to 1.7% on average between 2007 and 2009, 2.4-fold of the total industry disaster rate of 0.7%.

The union added, “The number of casualties was 46 in 2007, 45 in 2008, and 53 in 2009, which is tantamount to one worker being killed at shipyards in five days on average.

Source: Asiasis