Health and Safety at Work

After all the amazing capacity building work we saw at the Red Cross, the MMDA and Gawad Kalinga in the Philippines this week's health and safety training was a bit of an eye opener.

In a global context our environment is pretty safe (see Philippines; in the top 12 countries most prone to natural disasters) but the trainer managed to make people feel like they'd face death as they went to the next room to get the sandwiches. In comparison to people who go to work every day in a city of potholed pavements, less than controlled traffic and the ever present threat of earthquakes and flooding the risk to our health of tripping over a cable kind of seems insignificant. 

However the real contrast came in the attitude we're taught. In a hierarchical list of how to deal with a hazard training came around 6 or 7 (if I'd realised I was going to write this I'd have made more notes). This is despite it being clear that in order to carry out actions 1 to 5 or 6 someone would have to have been trained. But this was what the message seemed to be: other people are responsible for keeping you safe at work. What came across was that your employers responsibilities outweigh your own. 

When schools in the slums of Manila are teaching primary age children to spot the warning signs of TB and the Red Cross are training people how to deal with serious flooding and earthquake this doesn't seem right. 

Yes our employers might have a responsibility to make sure we don't come to harm at work but we do too and maybe the training should look more at how we can practically identify and prevent risk rather than looking at horror stories and reporting procedures. 

If we're getting down to details such as bad backs and poor posture why not suggest that the employee use a bit of initiative and raise their monitor with a book? Or if their chair isn't right use a cushion. For some the solution might not be that simple but it often is. 

Maybe we should look at teaching people common sense first? Or at least assume they'll be using it on a day to day basis. 

Visit to the Red Cross

A visit to Quezon City’s Chapter of the Philippine Red Cross involved another serious conference setting and a presentation including all their volunteers dressed up in uniform. Kindly arranged by a Rotarian I met at one of the meetings a long presentation didn’t even begin to cover the amazing work they do in the Philippines.

I think sometimes we forget in the UK how spoilt we are. If we have an emergency, a fire or a car accident we call the emergency services and know they will come. In Manila that might not be the case. While the Chairmen wasn’t critical of the government provision of emergency service it was clear that these were not meeting the need and the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) were filling in the gap.

In addition to the services that are remarkably similar to the British Red Cross (BRC) in terms of support for the homeless, first aid training and family tracing to name a few, there is also an additional massive scope to their work in Manila. As well as the disaster relief, a vital service with the Philippines being the top most disaster prone country, there is massive work in capacity building for communities as well as filling in for the emergency services. If this wasn’t impressive enough the fact that there are almost no paid staff and this work is carried out by volunteers should do it.

Although they do have an emergency number and a call centre is manned 27/7 they are also called out by the Philippine National Police when they attend emergencies. But the main point of contact with the public is through their astonishingly comprehensive network of volunteers. Ambulances, dinghys and fire engines are donated by their supporters.

Recognising that the usual support systems we rely on in the UK might not be available or affordable to most of the population the PRC, like the MMDA and other organisations we’ve seen focus on training people to help themselves in an emergency. Thousands of members of the public are trained in not only first aid but disaster preparedness an water rescue and they have a great volunteer retention rate with the volunteers around the table averaging a seven year involvement.

Each chapter fundraises and is given a target and a budget. Quezon City’s is 65m pesos and they regularly exceed fundraising expectations. Each chapter has its own board of trustees and paid staff and the national PRC sits over the top with its own board. Interestingly this board includes 6 representatives appointed by the president perhaps representing the key role the organisation plays in the country. However the staff we spoke to were keen to assure that they didn’t see this as compromising the independence of the organisation as with them representing only 20% these six could not have a majority vote.

Following the visit to the Quezon City Chapter we were lucky enough to be able to visit the national headquarters where after the rest of the group made it clear my list of questions was too long the briefing session was cut short and we went for a look at their monitoring centre where everything from the levels of La Mesa Dam to the levels of deportees from Saba. All this work is done on simple excel spreadsheets regularly updated by staff.

To put into context the severity of the risk the PRC are facing an overflow at La Mesa Dam could kill two million people if evacuation is not quick enough. 

Like most organisations we’ve seen whilst we’re here this type of risk gives so much more significance to their work. With so few resources the work done here is stunning and I’ve written in previous posts really simple, practical economic solutions go so far to mitigating these risks.