05/06/2009 - Appeal to prevent workplace deaths
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has urged businesses across the UK to place greater emphasis on workplace safety and prevent thousands of deaths every year.
The recession, along with increasing pressure to cut business expenditure, could be turning offices into dangerous workplaces, the organisation warned. It added that more employees are now seeing preserving jobs as more important than their health and safety.
Judith Hackitt, chairman of the HSE, said: "We are calling on employers and business owners to take the lead themselves in preventing the thousands of deaths every year which are caused by work - it is their moral and legal duty and it is good for the business."
A survey of 1,000 workers found that many believe that around 3,000 people were killed or seriously injured in workplaces last year, but statistics from the HSE show the figure to be more than 45 times higher - at an alarming 136,000.
A third of workers were also wrong in assuming that the HSE banned them from wearing flip flops at work or stopped children from playing with conkers, the group said.
Work and pensions secretary James Purnell said: "Amidst ridiculous myths about banning donkeys and flip flops, the fact is that too many people are still needlessly killed or injured."
Copyright © Press Association 2009
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