SURVEY: Are safety standards in Thailand progressing satisfactorily?

[gemguy]

Absolutely.....

However the problem here in Thailand is such that all those qualified safety inspectors would inevitably and eventually use that position to make money by way of under the table graft and corruption.

The contractors and or the project engineers or project owners would, sooner or later, simply pay off the inspector to pass inspection and turn a blind eye while the inspectors themselves would be gladly accepting the bribes.

If the safety inspectors stood their ground and held up production while costing thousands of baht per day delays then the safety inspectors would be dealt with in a variety of ways including menacing police officers letting them know they are causing problems for their clients...so back off with the inspector authority issue and lets all get along....So..... just take the bribe next time...or this gun of mine will be put to good use...Kow Jai My??

Meantime you are seeing a significant increase in safety practiced on Construction job sites as I clearly remember back in 1987 to 1990 observing major high rise construction projects on the go and I did not see one person at all wearing any personal protection safety gear.

Everyone wearing flip flop sandals and no hard hats or gloves while I watched all the welding done with no eye protection or sometimes with a pair of sun glasses and sometimes they had a scarf wrapped around their face while I never never saw them wearing any gloves while performing all the welding while wearing shorts and flip flop sandals.....And the grinding...Yikes...No face shield ..No glasses...just bare eyes and merrily grinding away.

By 1990 I remember seeing signs up on construction sites saying : Safety First

I began to notice that people were wearing hard helmets and some were wearing running shoes and boots and some had gloves while I began to notice more of the welders wearing welding helmets and gloves....but still many or most smaller construction jobs the welders were not even wearing sun glass, let alone a welding helmet and any other personal protection safety gear while still merrily grinding away with no eye protection at all.

Now I also see that there is a good number of safety equipment and personal protection safety gear companies selling all the same items as you would see in Europe or North America.

When you go to some of the construction related trade fairs you will see numerous companies selling nearly everything we have back there in North America

So the intent is there but any companies working on the cheap seldom if ever practice the safety standards we would practice as it slows things down and there are too many other construction companies that can do the jobs cheaper for the client if safety issues are ignored.

And the clients do not care, nor are they held liable for any injuries or accidents or deaths on their jobsites and neither are the construction contractors..........as this is Thailand.

Cheers

Do the job properly and there is need to bribe anyone to get it passed. Most of the so called inspectors dont have much idea of what the standards are so effectively they are just there to make it look good.

This is true....but I surmise that ( most ) of the trades people here do not care that much about the quality of their work while I doubt if any safety that is taught to them actually sinks in for all too many of them while many of the people doing the jobs that would or should need safety to be practiced involve uneducated, lowest wage possible workers.

I think a lot depends on the industry and the scope of work involved.

I am certain the large auto manufacturing plants must practice a notable degree of on the job safety training and practiced work related safety.

The oil and gas industry definitely would have a much higher degree of safety and probably as good or nearly as good as the safety standards and safety procedures practiced in other countries....but more than likely more lax concerning all of the same safety procedures being followed up on.

Meantime you see plenty of dangerous work related conduct...... if you look around for it.

Cheers

Edited June 6, 2016 by gemguy

[selftaopath]

How can health and safety be improved in a country which is run by an unelected prime minister.

His concerns are the price of lottery tickets and attitude adjustment of his people.

NOT workplace safety or public safety which is evident from the daily carnage on the roads and news reports like today's building collapse and the Bangkok Bank suffocation incident a few weeks back.

The fact that the prime minister is unelected has nothing to do with safety standards, non existing safety standards were exactly the same with the previous corrupt elected governments...!!!

But that doesn't change the fact that a prime minister should do all for his folks to increase the safety standards.

Elected, erected, or selected. Your statement that the former corrupt government was the same answers the question.

Are less road deaths more important than the price of a lottery ticket?

And wouldn't a much better education reform be the goal of a self elected prime minister who's not really liked by anybody?

But you can't change anything when all the Ministers in important positions are soldiers. How can a general as the boss of the MoE change something, not knowing anything about the topic itself?

And that goes for all the important positions, all taken by military guys who're usually trained to kill, or to fight wars.

Somebody has to kiss snow white to wake her up before it's too late.

I am hard pressed to believe any of the "owners" of Thailand care much about the people or the country. At practically every level of anything in Thailand the most important and possibly the only think important is money. Where can the shinning examples of integrity be found in Thailand?

[selftaopath]

We (Americans) love to complain about lawyers and tell jokes at their expense, but in more serious moments I have said lawyers are what makes America work. Thanks to lawyers, makers of shoddy or harmful products are held accountable, polluters can be stopped, public facilities are safe and accessible. Yeah, I know there are some odd labels, mattress tags, etc., but overall we're safer and fairer because of the rule of law.

Lawyers make America work? . A country where the prison population is exceeded only by China, it's estimated up to 10% of the people legally executed are innocent, and the mongrels who precipitated the Global Financial Crisis walked away to their gated communities with millions. A country where the Second Amendment, enabling the mass slaughter of children, is zealously protected by a raft of lawyers.

It's quite odd how Americans don't understand why so many people in the world don't regard them as wonderful. However, Americans are so far up themselves they don't even notice.

I agree, and I'm an American.

[Mudcrab]

You only have to take one look at the street electrical shamozzle to answer your own question , Thailand has stagnated since 1997 in more ways than one and safety is no better now than it was then, very basic...........................................

Glad you posted. Only yesterday workers from the provincial electric authority arrived outside my house, propped their ladder against the bird's nest of wires at the top of the pole there and went to work.

As they do everywhere....what is the point of your post?