Legal Aspects of HSE

Legal Aspects of HSE

It is estimated that unsafe work conditions is one of the leading causes of death and disability among India’s working population. These deaths are needless and preventable. Unlike growth rates and GDP figures that are flaunted every quarter, the figures of dying and ailing workers who make this growth possible are never recorded or spoken about. The only way to get an idea of the scale of the problem is from data released by the ILO , which estimates that around 403,000 people in India die every year due to work-related problems. To give some idea of the scale — more than 1,000 workers die every day from work-related diseases; that’s about 46 every hour!

Though these figures are alarming, they might be a conservative estimate as the ILO does not receive complete and reliable data from India. For example, in 2003, India reported 179 fatal accidents, while the ILO put the estimate at 47,000.

There are no reliable figures for occupational diseases either. The ILO arrives at these figures by extrapolating them from developed countries like Denmark where every accident and disease is reported