A typical day at a food hypermarket in one of the cities of Ukraine ended tragically when one of the visitors to this distribution network crashed directly onto the car parking lot. Fortunately, there were two engineering and technical workers next to the injured employee who were able to provide him with first aid before the emergency arrived to the scene.
These two men who shortly before received special labor protection training – namely, training in providing first aid, essentially saved the life of their own client.
This incident, like many other industrial accidents, serves as a living reminder of how enterprises of all forms of ownership should ensure safety training, and especially special training on labor protection.
STATISTICS ON TRAINING OF STAFF IN UKRAINE
Statistics show that less than 10 percent of hired personnel in Ukraine receive timely labor safety training. Only every eighth enterprise has developed labor protection documentation – regulations, orders, instructions on specialties and types of work, training programs and magazines of briefings – introductory and in the workplace. And of these enterprises, only half are able to correctly use the available documentation on OT. The rest have documents on labor protection. In the best case, the director of the enterprise and labor protection engineer (or a person acting as a labor protection engineer in combination) underwent a special training on general labor protection issues and received appropriate certificates.
With such sad statistics, we can talk about some kind of complex work – the development of a labor protection management system, the introduction of prevention programs at enterprises occupational injuries, unfortunately, do not have to. In Ukraine, no one is training their employees not to help themselves and their colleagues in the event of an emergency or emergency, let alone help outsiders.
In the USA, for example, employees of many companies are trained to recognize signs of cardiac arrest, perform artificial respiration and indirect heart massage, and are taught how to act in certain emergency situations. At special courses on labor protection, students learn to identify diseases, injuries, recognize shock conditions, and provide first aid. In addition, at the same courses, staff are trained in splinting fractures, providing assistance during an asthma attack or an epileptic seizure, combating asphyxia and eliminating severe bleeding.
The training consists of practical classes on labor protection and first aid, as well as an online course and can be completed by employees at a convenient for them time with the provision of labor protection certificates. Students are offered both printed and digital certificates, which allows enterprises to quickly and conveniently check the status of certification of all employees.
Who knows how the accident described above would have ended if it had happened in the parking lot of an ordinary Ukrainian enterprise, rather than a joint US-Ukrainian holding ? Only competent training on labor protection issues, the introduction of an industrial safety culture on the ground, allowed us to avoid a tragedy. But such standards in the field of labor protection in Kiev, and indeed in Ukraine as a whole, are still very far away.
