A step down

The fall of Minister of National Security Stuart Young may have been a laughing matter for some — itself a telling fact showing our propensity to glee over the misfortunes of others — but the truth is, it was an alarming incident given the seriousness of Young’s post, and the implications for health and safety practices at all levels of State.

People have shown great ingenuity in the many memes and social media remixes which were devised in the wake of this incident. If only we showed the same degree of creativity and enthusiasm when it comes to tackling some of the critical issues facing us as a society.

One such issue, and it is no laughing matter, is health and safety at work. The State has done much in an attempt to usher in a culture of safety: passing ground-breaking Occupational Safety and Health Authority (OSHA) legislation, enforcing new rules at construction sites, changing the way mass gatherings are managed, shutting down premises deemed to not be in compliance.

There has been good reason for all of this. About a dozen people die annually at work, according to OSHA figures. That’s one every month. The new regime, which is already more than a decade old, hasn’t always worked well. There have been problems with investigation and enforcement, inconsistent practices, and the deaths keep happening, from someone falling off a building to the death of a worker at an offshore oil platform recently.

But the crowning sign of dysfunction setting in was the fact that the building that once housed OSHA itself was in 2012 found to be in violation of health and safety practices. Public servants frequently cite health and safety concerns to justify protest action. Those same civil servants were present when Young fell — the slip has been blamed on a defectively-designed and shoddily-installed step.

The minister is entitled to the basic expectation that when he is to speak at an event he should be able to do so without injury to himself. If Young cannot enjoy this basic assumption, who can?

The fact that the State itself is unable to implement basic checks and procedures at its own events — and this one was very high-profile: a former prime minister, who herself once slipped and fell in the Red House, was in the audience — can be taken as a sign of a more general health and safety malaise.

As for those who sought to make political mileage out of this it should be noted that when Stuart Young fell, it wasn’t him alone falling, but every member of the government system of which he is a part, and by “government” we mean in its widest sense inclusive of the Opposition, civil servants, State employees.

Someone should be held accountable and this matter should be treated with the seriousness it deserves

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