Manila Water Company: Health and Safety Regulations

Health and Safety Regulations

Posted: Friday April 27, 2007

Manila Water is fully compliant with the requirements of the Bureau of Working Conditions of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). All offices, facilities and construction sites are making sure that any activities must be 100 percent free from significant adverse health and safety implications. Furthermore, where incidents have occurred (see table below), the remedial measures implemented proved to be very effective.

Manila Water is required to submit a monthly report to the DOLE that must include details of any “reportable” accidents which occur (“reportable accidents” are defined by the DOLE). Manila Water provides these statistics by division, and categorizes them according to severity as follows:

• Category 1 – fatal or major injury (major injury defined as requiring five days or more in the hospital);
• Category 2 – any injury which results in the person being away from work for more than three days but less than Category 1;
• Category 3 – any injury which results in the person being away from work for between one and three days;
• Category 4 – any other accident or injury whether time is lost or not.

These categories are based on those used by United Utilities in its United Kingdom operations and hence are in line with international practice.

Accident statistics for Manila Water since the start of 1998 are given below. Only the 1998 category 1 incident involved a fatality – the incidents in 2001, 2003 and 2005 were major injuries.

Manila Water Accident Statistics

N – No lost time
R – Reportable
LT – Lost time
NLT – No lost time
RTA – Road traffic accident
DO – Dangerous occurrence
Public – Members of the public
NM – Near-miss

For comparison, the accident incidence rate (AIR) for the UK construction industry as whole varies between 4.4 and 5.7 “reportable” accidents (corresponding to Categories 1 to 3) per 1000 employees. Equivalent data for United Utilities’ worldwide operations (i.e., including both the UK operations and international operations such as that of Manila Water) gives an AIR in 2004 of 5.7. Thus it can be seen that Manila Water results in 2004 (AIR of 1.28) are better than those for the UK construction industry as well as those of UU worldwide. Overall, the data indicate that following earlier improvements (1998 to 2001) Manila Water’s figures seem to have stabilized at a relatively low number of reportable incidents per year. On other measures, 2006 has been the “safest” year for Manila Water where accident incidence rate recorded an impressive 0.63.

In recent years, Manila Water has implemented a number of measures to improve the health and safety of its workforce. Examples of initiatives include the implementation of confined spaces training, chlorine leak drills and risk assessments/audit and reporting measures. Manila Water has stated that it will continue to intensify these efforts in order to reduce the number of reportable accidents further.

It is worthy to note that the relatively low level of accidents in 2006 occurred despite a significant increase in the number of construction work being carried out in the Manila Water concession area, which would have increased the chances of a mishap occurring.