Two thousand kilometres away from the Danish model : transposition, implementation and enforcement of EU Occupational Safety and Health legislation in Malta

Abstract

The number of occupational injuries per annum in Malta has reduced steadily up until2011. Since then, injury numbers have been relatively consistent. A closer analysis of the numbers indicates that injury rates in males continue to decline slowly, whereas those in females appear to be increasing (National Statistics Office [NSO], 2010 - 2018).These trends appear to be largely explained by increasing employment rates, particularly in women. In fact, when corrected per capita, accident rates have continued to decline from 2,912 injuries per 100,000 workers in 2002 to 1,261 per 100,000workers in 2016, a notable improvement (Occupational Health and Safety Authority[OHSA], 2017). The industries with the highest injury rates in 2017 included manufacturing (16.9%), construction (15.2%) and transport and storage (14.1%)(NSO, 2018). Whilst occupational injuries are thought to be under-reported, reporting of occupational diseases is so infrequent that meaningful statistics do not exist. This situation is not unique to Malta (OHSA, 2017). The OHSA attributes this lack of reporting to several factors including a lack of awareness and incentives for doctors to report, including the absence of legal obligations for medical practitioners to report such diseases, whilst a lack of compensation and fear is believed to discourage employees from reporting (OHSA, 2017).Whereas injury statistics are comprehensive, limited national research has been conducted on the state of OSH in Malta. One large such study (OHSA, 2011a) found that OSH levels were better in larger organisations, whilst indicating that progress needed to be made to increase the prevalence of competent persons, workers health and safety representatives, OSH training and risk assessments in workplaces in Malta. A more recent snapshot of health and safety in Malta is provided by ESENER-2 statistics (EU-OSHA, 2016). When comparing Malta to the EU-28, positive findings as well as areas which require improvement emerge. For example, Malta scored above the EU-28average in OSH visits by the labour inspectorate; the availability of bullying, violence, and/or stress policies; the reorganisation of work to reduce the predictors of stress; confidential counselling for employees; and the set-up of conflict resolution procedure, amongst others. Malta, however was reported below the EU-28 average in categories which included: the number of enterprises that conduct risk assessments regularly; the perceived availability of information on conducting psychosocial risk assessments; the provision of psychosocial risk training; procedures to support workers returning to work following sick leave; and documents explaining responsibilities and procedures on OSH available to workers, amongst others. As ESENER-2 showed that OSH levels were generally better in larger organisations, the high density of micro and small companies in Malta is likely to have biased these results (European Commission, 2017).