I’ve been involved in the transport industry for over 45 years. In that time, I have witnessed many attempts at reform and training in our workplace.
The transport industry itself has accepted much of the shortcomings of a larger issue. The fact is we operate our equipment in a workplace where we are the minority.
We share our workplace with amateurs who have a minimum of training in the rules, responsibilities and duties they are required to undertake to make our workplace safe.
In any other industry, if the number of near misses and incidents that occurred on our roads daily were evident, the WH&S system would be swung into action to address the issues.
As we have no such system in our workplace, it is beholden upon the bureaucrats and responsible departments to derive, deliver, monitor and police policy that ensures our workplace remains as safe as possible.
It’s time the transport industry held these departments, DGs, managers, supervisors, and officers to account.
Our workplace’s safety continues to deteriorate. The on-the-job abuse would not be tolerated in any other workplace. The lack of training and blatant disregard of the rules in our workplace by amateurs in our workplace would not be tolerated in any other workplace.
The articles such as Highway police make alarming find amid rising caravan trend on Australian roads highlight the blatant disregard by individuals and ineptness of enforcement by the responsible parties. These are MAJOR SAFETY breaches in our workplace.
We are losing our experience professional driver base due to the inequity of the enforcement of road rules, the lack of training of those within our workplace and the real increase in danger in our workplace.
We replace these drivers with less experienced drivers. This compounds the lack of knowledge and proficiency in the general professional driving pool. The slide in safety continues. This is evident in UC, Canada, and the EU.
The solution is to increase training, responsibility and enforcement on ALL persons in the workplace. Its time ALL vehicles were pulled in for weighting, on the spot road worthiness inspections, licence checks.
When equity returns to the workplace, ie a perception of Australian fairness, we may have a chance of retaining our experiences employee base.
It’s time we stopped accepting the perpetual beratement from government and bureaucrats and held them to account to perform the tasks they are paid to do.
If they don’t do it, resign, and stop taking our hard earned taxpayer money to create an unsafe work environment.
Here endith the rant. The problem is obvious, the solution is simple, implementation will be glacial/bureaucratic.
About the author:
Bernard Murphy is General Manager of Sort It Haulage, specialists in the transport of earthmoving and agricultural equipment including import/export deliveries.
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