Safety and Health: The Attempt of Building Awareness in Educational Teachings

Knowledge in taking responsibility to stay observed and alerted towards one’s

surroundings is an important matter that should be taken seriously by everyone. This
includes applying a helmet while riding a bike, wearing a coat during experiment conduction,
consuming reliable and clean food daily. Although to many it is a natural common sense to
be innately attained, it is undeniably taken lightly to most -even in respective workplaces
during adulthood. According to Benjamin O. Alli (2011)., roughly 270 million people
worldwide are victims to occupational injuries, fatal and non-fatal annually. In addition, the
International Labour Organization (ILO) recently reported an approximation of 2 million of
victims (Black, A. D., Car, J., Pagliari, C., Anandan, C., Cresswell, K., Bokun, T., ... &
Sheikh, A. 2011). This is a significant matter in one’s safety and health, not to mention the
effects towards the economic costs involving these individuals, enterprises and nations.

Malaysia is not exceptional to this problem. Occupational accidents according to

sectors in Malaysia has resulted in 7 percent of deaths overall, whereas most were non-
permanent disabilities -majorly in the job scopes of manufacturing, mining or quarrying
followed by construction activities. Besides, 50 percent of occupational disease reports were
confirmed by the Occupational Health Division. One of the common diseases were noise-
induced hearing disorders such as hearing impairment, noise-induced hearing loss and
permanent standard threshold shift (DOSH, 2016). These accidents and injuries were all
caused by preventable factors in which could be eliminated or reduced by simply
implementing existing measures and methods. Awareness.

The fundamental principles of occupational health and safety may not necessarily be
exposed only during the career stage, but rather since primary school. Modules concerning
to safety and health should be issued by the Ministry of Education and be standardised to all
school institutions. This can be specified into teaching students in-depth of the careers they
wish to pursue in. For example, a division of modules each year are made based on sector
dominance. Hygiene or health concerns are applicable for medical practitioners,
psychiatrists, waiters, chefs etc whereas workplaces that heavily involve heavy weight-lifting
such as constructionists should be prioritized on safety matters. Students will receive hands-
on guide of the safety regulations included with interesting activities. The benefits are that it
provides an early exposure to Malaysian students on the expectations and the risks involved
in the future and automatically is digested into themselves years in advance as comparison
to only be informed during the first day of work.
 The educational practitioners should also act as a medium to educate and bring
awareness to the students of this knowledge. Respective schools and teachers should be
professionally trained in conducting the safety and health modules in order to provide the
students unlimited exposure towards it –instead of solely focusing on academia alone.
Teachers are responsible to have commitment in evaluating the modules according to
student’s verbal feedbacks, performance and evaluate the overall results confirming to either
have an increase in productivity of students or vice versa. Boarding schools for instances,
MARA Junior Science College has recently changed its system to include several types of
educational backgrounds such as International Baccalaureate (IB), technical, IGCSE,
premier and more, it is possible to assume that we are leading into a better education
support to our future generations. However, only selected students have access to them.
Hence, it is important that this module should be available to all students and the best
alternative is to direct them to primary schools.

A major concern to this attempt is the time and cost. The geographical locations of
certain secluded areas cause difficulty for teachers to gather and share information. Lack of
consistency is a major downfall and a solution to this is cooperation and also the
involvement of parents to achieve this goal. Spreading awareness to parents will also
increase the chances of fund raising and reduce the burden of school authorities
economically especially in transportation. The involvement of parents or guardians also
creates the chance of their children being aware towards their health and safety
surroundings outside school settings. Do these investments in the end constitute to the
damages caused by occupational health and safety victims? Possibly not. Various industrial
countries supplied with extensive and comprehensive systems regarding to the occupational
safety and health (OSH) management, it is demonstrated whether there was a consistent
reduction in accident rates (Black, A. D., Car, J., Pagliari, C., Anandan, C., Cresswell, K.,
Bokun, T., ... & Sheikh, A. 2011). In conclusion, it is believed that with an addition of early
exposure towards this topic, the accident rates will furtherly decline.

It is often perceived that these unintended events, accidents, injuries even death are
minor causes of an external occurrence. Therefore, emphasizing on the importance of safety
and health -alongside its application in daily life, is thus important for every individual to
attain. It is true that nobody is completely unaffected by potential hazards or accidents, but
with available traditional measures and methods in addition to early awareness in schools,
our resistance may evolve significantly.

(837 Words)
References

Black, A. D., Car, J., Pagliari, C., Anandan, C., Cresswell, K., Bokun, T., ... & Sheikh, A.
(2011). The impact of eHealth on the quality and safety of health care: a systematic
overview. PLoS medicine, 8(1), e1000387.

Department of Occupational Health and Safety (2016). Occupational Diseases and

Poisoning
Investigation. Retrieved on 25th September 2018 from
http://www.dosh.gov.my/index.php/en/occupational-diseases-and-poisoning-statistic

Appendix

Figure 1.0
Figure 1.1