On the Rising Number of Industrial Accidents and Injuries

I recently wrote about the environment, occupational health and safety, and industrial safety. Today it was announced that next year will be the Year of Working Professions, and this matters, especially for occupational health and safety and industrial safety. This month alone I have read several news reports of new accidents and workplace injuries at industrial enterprises. At MAEK, a worker was killed when a pipe collapsed. At a workshop of SSGPO JSC, a worker died during repairs on a railcar dumper. In Ridder, six people were injured when a dust-air mixture exploded at a thermal power plant. Every month the news summaries carry cases like these, and they are the result of absent or violated safety rules at work. I can recall a dozen such incidents this year alone, and over the decades there must be hundreds.

Each of these cases results either from insufficient investment in safety or from outright disregard of standards. Take the latest incident at the Ridder thermal power plant, which raises questions. How could a dust-air mixture explode again at a plant that was fully repaired only this year, after last year's accident? Most likely, the plant's management never even considered that coal dust is explosive. Any safety engineer will say that operating such facilities without aspiration equipment is absolutely unacceptable. This equipment removes the dust-gas mixture from the production area, protecting workers' safety and health. I suspect that many thermal power plants simply do not use such equipment, and the state turns a blind eye.

Coal dust carries not only a risk of explosion but also causes chronic lung disease. If one calculates how much the state spends on treating such illnesses, it becomes clear that caring about safety at production sites makes economic sense. This is a question not only of workers' health but also of long-term costs.

When I tried to find out which body is responsible for workplace safety, I ran into confusion. There is the Committee for State Labor Inspection under the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, which is responsible for occupational health and safety. There is the Committee for Sanitary and Epidemiological Control under the Ministry of Health, which handles public health protection. There is the Industrial Safety Committee under the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which is responsible for production safety. Finally, there is the Committee for Environmental Regulation and Control under the Ministry of Ecology. Responsibility for occupational health and workplace safety is spread across several agencies, and there is no single state body dealing exclusively with the issue. This means there is no clear oversight of enterprises.

Unfortunately, ESG and workplace safety issues remain a low priority at private companies that are not publicly listed, and action is often reactive. In my view, we need a dedicated workplace safety law with detailed regulations and strict liability for employers who violate them, up to and including suspension of operations until all violations are remedied. We also need a single supervisory body with the necessary expertise, equipment, powers and accountability.

Until we address workplace safety systematically, Kazakhstan will continue to bear enormous human and economic losses. This problem, I believe, demands immediate action, because nothing is more important than human health.