“I will make no secret of it: practically all participants in our group were quite sceptical at the beginning”, says Gennady, chief safety engineer at a pulp-and-paper mill. “Indeed, I have worked at this enterprise for almost 15 years and I thought I knew everything about it, especially on occupational safety. ‘What can they teach me’, I thought to myself….”
Gennady works for one of the 11 pilot enterprises selected under an ILO project funded by Finland to improve occupational safety and health (OSH) systems in North-West Russia. The pilots tested a new ILO methodology for recording and reporting the economic costs of occupational accidents.
Gennady and the other project participants soon realized that they were mistaken with their sceptical attitude towards the project. The new accident cost methodology, developed in Finland, Canada and the United Kingdom was adapted by the ILO project to the specific conditions in Russia.
Thanks to the new methodology, the Russian OSH experts realized that the real cost of accidents was in some cases four to five times higher than they previously thought.
See full Press Release.
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