As-Salam-o-Alaikum Respected Readers,

It is not 100% false or untrue if I say that we lack mindset in personal safety and proactive approach.

Most of the developing nations have their statistical departments working, to use their resources effectively and rather spending on reactive management like giving free (or subsidized) medicines or allocating budget to deal with hospital emergencies etc. They do investments in avoiding accidents by creating awareness through media, community centers, regulatory departments, managing industrial statistics effectively and penalizing employers, enforcing/convincing personal safety at work and guiding nation while legislation to protect human resources etc.

But unfortunately in Pakistan we lack a mindset in personal safety and proactive approach. We do not have our statistics right as we don’t know what happened in last three to four years. As the statistics released by Pakistan Statistical Bureau are three to four years behind due to any reasons those are not acceptable at all and not of any benefits to our nation. How can we correct things when we don’t know what went wrong in last one or two years. But in Pakistan we don’t know what went wrong in last 3 to four years.

“What gets measure; get done.”    

Below are some of the excerpts from Pakistan Statistical Year Book 2010. After seeing these you can image what is going wrong and where it leads!

So, in traffic accidents our Statistical Bureau has data up to 2008-2009. Hence we missed data for 2009-2010. This might does not look bad to some of you but see other countries have their bi-annually and even in some countries every quarter.

Oops this time we don’t have record for 2008-09 & 2009-10. So how come we say how much jobs are required by un-employed Pakistanis?

Sorry, we don’t know what happened after 2003 onward to date.

What is there nothing to present after 2002? But still mining and extraction work is in progress!

Now see the most dreadful acknowledgement of Statistics of Bureau in below note.

Let me remind to you that the above excerpt is from the Statistical Year Book of 2010 which was released in April 2011. From this you can understand the gravity of matter that we don’t know how much lives we have lost during 2009 and 2010 at work.

I remembered one of my instructors told me that the policies, standards and work instructions we have are written with the blood of our ancestors. I must say that they suffered, sacrificed their lives to our safety and we should look after not only ourselves but our colleagues and community where we live and work and to pay tribute to them while following what our system demands.

Let us share how you prepare occupational health and safety statistics in your company and how often. How and to whom you deliver the statistical data and how to allocate your budget to control what went wrong.

To Your Success,

Faisal Javed Mir