On Friday, 24 September, 2021, a worker fell from height while working on a container, landed on his head and died instantly, according to reports.
The incident got some workers of the Tema Port on Friday evening protesting the death of their colleague, resulting in the police personnel firing rubber bullets to disperse the angry crowd. Although no further casualty was recorded, some of the protesters sustained injuries from the rubber bullets.
The workers were agitated by the lack of response to several calls for an ambulance. According to them, management of the port had failed to provide a standby ambulance for immediate response to accidents that might occur at the yard due to the high risk involved in the work there.
These were the statements of some of the workers interviewed:
“That section is a thin line between life and death, and there must be an ambulance parked 24/7 so that when an incidents like this happen, the ambulance can convey the person.
“We’ve talked about this issue (about ambulance) but all fell on deaf ears. The workers are angry because the ambulance didn’t show up,” he said.
“Management called for police, and when they came, they shot into the crowd. They were about six officers. They were shooting directly at the crowd. One person had his eye shot and the other, the back”, the eyewitness stated.
From the safety standpoint, the workers protest is the direct result of poor incident management, after management failing to activate an adequate emergency response to try to save a life and to call for a safety stand-down to address the workers to show that they at least care.
This is the second fatal accident Tema Port has recorded this year, recalling a previous fatal accident involving metal beams https://sheqpghonline.com/metal-beams-crush-worker-to-death-at-tema-port-terminal/
The management of the port could be charged for corporate manslaughter for failing to learn from their past incidents, especially these unacceptable deaths.
There is the need for resilient proactive systems to prevent such incidents from occurring and also the need for adequate emergency response system to mitigate the consequence of these incidents.
The protest by the workers is in good order and should be encouraged without any obstruction from the police.
This is definitely a wake up call to the management to sit up and ensure that the safety of workers at the port is their topmost priority.
2 Comments
The health and safety of the work crew is not seen as a core value of the business and there’s no safety management system in place which is robust to ensure high risk jobs are adequately controlled. What happened to having a working at height procedure which ought to be complied with before commencing job. Who supervises those operations. Which safe system of work is being used. Until management fuse health and safety of the workers into operations and involve workers. These news will always keep popping up.
Well, the presence of ambulance could help , maybe. But this is soo REACTIVE. They should raise more proactive measures.
I believe an ambulance present wouldn’t solve the cause of the incident.
There is more they could ask than call for ambulance. Second fatality in a year!!. They need to review their whole safety management system.