Safety regulations responsible parties

Reporters know that readers probably will not understand the water and phosgene and methyl isocyanate reactions covered in the Bhopal story. The story gets summed up as an unnatural disaster and pesticides become only a party to the larger issues of worker training, safety regulations, corporate responsibility, and so on. 

The purpose of the Decree and the four regulations is threefold (Sect, i of the Decree) To further a high standard for safety, achieve a systematic implementation of measures to fulfil safety requirements and objectives, and further develop and improve safety standards. While the first and last of these objectives aim directly at the fundamental objective of any safety legislation, the second objective points in a slightly different direction in order to be able to systematically implement relevant measures to comply with safety requirements, the responsible party has to establish an administrative and organisational structure for this purpose. This objective thus constitutes the inception of the internal control system (Subsection 5.1.2 (b)). 

The responsible party shall continuously improve health, safety and the environment by identifying the processes, activities and products in need of improvement, and implementing necessary improvement measures. The measures shall be followed up and the effects evaluated. The individual employee shall be encouraged to actively identify weaknesses and suggest solutions, cf. Section r5 of the Framework Regulations. Applying experience from own and others activities shall be facilitated in the improvement work. ... 

The responsible party shall ensure that the personnel at all times have the competence necessary to carry out the activities in accordance with the health, safety and environment legislation. In addition, the personnel shall be able to handle hazard and accident situations, cf. Section 14 of the Management Regulations and Section 23 of these regulations. 

A different approach emerged some time ago from legislative action in the United Kingdom and this has spread to other Commonwealth and European countries. Chapters 5 and 34 provide more details. The concept requires employers, manufacturers and others to identify and evaluate the risks of their workplaces, products, and processes. They must then act to eliminate, reduce, and control the risks. Governments do not have to prescribe in detail how to achieve safety through standards and regulations. This is a performance approach. Enforcement focuses on how well responsible parties can identify and mitigate risks. 

The study was based on reviews of documents and data made available by the main stakeholders, and on 30 in-depth interviews with key personal representing all parties and their safety experts. These data was supplemented by three case studies of specific installations. The analyses have been based on qualitative approaches to the study of documents, interviews and cases. In addition, the findings discussed in this chapter will draw heavily on information received when the author was an adviser for NPD in their development of new regulations. An information source added specially for this article, are the written responses from the main stakeholders in the hearing of the draft for new safety regulations. 

Collaboration between the parties and employee participation are important preconditions for the inspection and regulation model that applies to health, environment and safety in the activities. This follows, not least, as a consequence of the authorities having abandoned detailed regulation and control. The authorities have, instead, made the parties responsible for finding the best solution by themselves within the boundaries for pmdent activity drawn by the authorities. Feedback shows, however, that collaboration between the parties and participation has not been sufficiently taken care of during the later years. There is consequently a need for renewed and strengthened attention to these issues, (p. 10)... 

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