Jagdish Patel

 NHRC Identifies SILICOSIS as serious issue of Human Rights Violation.   On 6th March NHRC organized reveiw of the Halth Status with refernce to its recommendations in 2005.   In Public hearing on Denial to health care held at Bhopal in 2004, as member of Gujarat JSA, PTRC had made representation on Silicosis deaths among Agate workers. One of the victims MAheshbhai personally came to Bhopal for representation.Maheshbhai died of Silicosis in December, 2006.

Role and Importance of the Grassroots OSH Movement in promotion of workers Safety in Asia

The ANROAV Annual Conference of 2006 is dedicated to Vijay Kanhere - a renowned OSH activist and active ANROAV advisor, who passed away on June 20, 2006.   

Background

Occupational health and safety continued to be one of the key concerns in the Asian region in the year 2005. The ILO, in its XVIIth Congress in Florida, in September 2005 also impressed upon the need for urgent intervention in this area. The ILO also increased its global mortality figure from 2 million to 2.2 million annually due to work related reasons. Asia continues to be one of the major contributors for these statistics with China and India estimated to have majority of these fatalities, not only in sheer numbers but also in terms of rate. However, reporting continues to be one of major problematic areas in Asia, as underlined by the ILO. China reported only 12,736 (14% of the estimate) accidents in the year 2001 whereas ILO estimates the figure to be somewhere around 90,295 and India was even worse in terms of reporting as they reported merely 222 (0.55% of the estimate) accidents out of the estimated 40133 fatal accidents. Rest of Asia reports only 3051(4%) out of the 76886 estimated accidents. This figures show the gross negligence and severity and extent of underreporting in this region. This unfortunately is just the tip of the iceberg as majority of fatality at the workplace are due to Occupational diseases and that have a far less chance to be reported. OSH problems in Asia continue to be neglected and treated with utmost apathy by the respective governments in the region.