Today, Thursday, Jordan and the world celebrate World Day for Health and Safety in the Workplace, which falls on the twenty-eighth of April of each year. This year’s campaign is ‘Acting together to build a positive culture of safety and health.’

World Occupational Health and Safety Day aims to focus on the systems approach to the prevention of accidents in the workplace and on the management of occupational safety and health through the use of logical and effective tools in promoting permanent improvement in the performance of occupational health and safety at the workplace level in all its forms.

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that ‘occupational health deals with all aspects of health and safety in the workplace and has a strong focus on primary risk prevention’; WHO defined health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’ As for occupational health, it is a multidisciplinary field of health care concerned with enabling the individual to practice his profession in a manner that causes the least harm to his health, in line with the promotion of health and safety at work, which is concerned with preventing injury from hazards in the workplace.

The Higher Population Council (HPC) affirmed in a special press release on this occasion that its interest in WOHS Day stems from the importance of promoting a healthy, safe and proper work environment that stimulates work for different segments of workers in society, which enhances production efficiency, improves infrastructure and raises productivity for individuals to drive economic growth, in line with requirements of the labour market, which contributes to the realization and investment of the population opportunity.

The Higher Population Council indicated that during the past decades, occupational safety and health management systems have been widely applied in advanced countries by including legal requirements in national legislation, strengthening national guidelines and activating voluntary initiatives in this field, as it is necessary to adopt occupational safety and health management systems when applying prevention and protection measures in the workplace to improve the conditions, state of affairs and work environment.

HPC pointed out that, specialized institutions in Jordan such as the Ministry of Labour aim to monitor occupational safety and health to contribute to raising the level in this area, in order to ensure having a healthy, safe and proper work environment free from injuries and work accidents and with high productivity for workers in all sectors and professions, by raising awareness and by adherence to standards and best practices related to occupational safety and health in a manner that guarantees workers’ rights, and creating an integrated system of standards, policies and control tools in accordance with a participatory approach with the concerned official institutions, the private sector and social partners, in order to build a positive occupational safety and health culture nationwide.

This comes along with the role of the Social Security Department, which strives to be attentive to all aspects of occupational safety and health and social protection insurance for those covered by the provisions of the Social Security Law, where the minimum requirement (in order to prevent the occurrence of occupational accidents and human and material losses resulting therefrom in various establishments) is the institutions’ adherence and commitment to laws and legislation and the national regulations related to occupational safety and health. The annual report for the Social Security Department 2020 stated that the number of work injuries and occupational diseases dropped to 9,102 injuries and occupational diseases in 2020, of which about 27.9% were caused by people falling down, compared to 10,072 injuries and occupational diseases in 2019. The rate of decrease in work injuries for the year 2020 compared to 2019 was about (9.6%), while the number of work accidents increased to reach 13,784 accidents in 2020, where about 28.2% of these accidents were in the manufacturing sector, compared to 12,551 accidents in 2019. The increase in work accidents for the year 2020 compared to 2019 was 9.8%.

HPC recommended the need to increase awareness, focus and attention on how to promote and create a culture of health and safety that can help reduce the number of deaths and injuries related to the workplace, and the importance of establishing an occupational health services unit at the level of each institution entrusted with primarily preventive functions and responsible for advising the employer and workers on maintaining a safe and healthy work environment, as well as the importance of supporting the management of occupational health risks in health care facilities and ensuring continuity of response to emergency and primary health services, promoting a national preventive safety and health culture, providing information, counselling and training on occupational health risks, compiling data and conducting research on occupational health hazards