A WorkSafeNB health and safety blitz is aiming to raise awareness about the impact of injuries from worksite falls and to ensure safety regulations are being followed.
“We really want to raise awareness amongst employers, supervisors, and workers with respect to, ‘here’s what your responsibilities are and you should take them very seriously because if you don’t, the consequences can be very dire,’” said WorkSafeNB Vice-President, Prevention, Tim Petersen.
There have been seven workplace fatalities resulting from falls in New Brunswick over the last five years, along with hundreds of injuries.
The campaign focuses on residential construction with targeted inspection strategies and six dedicated health and safety officers inspecting various workplaces throughout the province.
WorkSafeNB is also partnering with the New Brunswick Construction Safety Association, the New Brunswick Roofing Contractors Association, and the Association of Municipal Administrators of New Brunswick to distribute material about worksite safety and regulations.
Petersen says they are looking specifically at three areas: the use and maintenance of equipment (particularly fall protection equipment), supervisor competency, and employee training and orientation.
“The two things we find most is people don’t understand their responsibilities and workers have not received adequate training,” he said.
Since the initiative started in July, WorkSafeNB has completed nearly 100 inspections with 10 per cent of the inspections resulting in stop-work orders.
