LAHORE: Despite spending Rs114.308 million, the Punjab Labour and Human Resource Department (PL&HRD) has failed to strengthen the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) standards.
According to details shared by PL&HRD, the OSH has been recognised as a human right and an integral part of people-centered agenda for sustainable development whereas the incidence of occupational diseases and injuries are very high in Pakistan, and thousands of workers are routinely exposed to hazardous chemicals/conditions.
To strength OSH standards in Punjab, PL&HRD had introduced the project “Capacity development of industry to promote compliance with labour standards” in 2014 with a total cost of Rs114.308 million with a gestation period of December 2014-June 2019.
The project had 20 major objectives, including recruitment of professionals, holding internationally accredited courses, in-house local training courses, awareness sessions in industries, capacity building, and procurement of safety inspection kits on OSH for 36 districts, to strengthen inspection regime, etc.
An OSH survey was conducted across Punjab from December 9, 2019, to December 20, 2019, by Directorate General Monitoring and Evaluation (DGM&E) during which teams collected data and recorded observations.
The evaluation findings by DGME showed that the project was not well-designed as it had an ambitious scope and was not appropriately executed.
According to DGM&E the emphasis of the project was on meeting the training and participants’ numbers rather than the need, quality and impact of these trainings on the improvement of the OSH standards of the selected industries.
Industries which were selected for the OSH trainings/awareness sessions, most of them were large enterprises/industries that already had well-established OSH systems and probably they did not require the sessions arranged under the project whereas the small and medium-size local industries, which required these trainings, were mostly ignored.
Therefore, findings indicated that despite the huge volume of trainings, overall this project did not have any remarkable impact on the OSH capacity/compliance of the industries in Punjab.
DGM&E teams also visited the industries across 15 districts of Punjab whereas meetings were held with officials of the department and industries and from these meetings it appeared that the ownership of the project at the district/provincial level was very weak.
Most of the Labour Department officials were unaware of the project, and they were reluctant to involve in any project activity.
However, from the OSH survey, it appeared that the department merely deals with the compensation, non-payment claims and elimination of the child labour from the brick-kiln industry, while OSH regime was virtually absent at the district-level which seemed that the Labour Department officials were not performing the OSH field activities since long-time.
According to DGME, one of the reasons was, they were not receiving the necessary support from their department. The officials reported that they do not have vehicles and receive TA/DA allowances to perform field activities.
Therefore, they were disinterested in OSH field activities. For the strengthening of the OSH regime at the district level, 38 OSH kits were procured under the project at a cost of nearly Rs12 million.
DGM&E stated that the overall aim of the project was not achieved.
To address the gaps outlined above, DGM&E suggested that the government organisations should promote research culture and conduct feasibility/SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis before introducing any development project.
It said that project scope and objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound, and there should be ownership of the project at all levels. Evidence-based interventions with the team approach produce better and sustainable outcomes, it added.
Speaking to Pakistan Today, Project Director Arshad Mehmood said that all the objectives of the project had been achieved. “We have conducted all the training sessions and also have the records of their attendance. We will definitely defend the report. The project is almost 95 per cent complete. We held media campaigns and awareness campaigns on massive levels. People give us very positive feedback on training and capacity building sessions,” he added.
