In Australia safety measures about any sort of work related activities are not just an issue of regulations, or even a seriously adopted concern, it’s an obsession. And I say ‘obsession’ because ‘psychosis’ or ‘neurosis’, which beyond reasonable doubt are more suiting words, would only be a bit too harsh.

As it is for all other matters, there is a regulatory authority called ‘work safe’ that not only defines and implements standard operating procedures to make the workplace safe and risk-free, it polices them too. If you are an employer of a, say, ice manufacturing factory or a bread baking joint, beware mate, it could well be that tomorrow morning, even before you get to your citadel, a work safe officer is standing in the doorway for a site-inspection grinning his good-morning away to you.

Naturally, the employers are immutably cautious and plan well ahead assessing possible accidents and appointing standing antidotes to inhibit them. Training is exceedingly emphasised on, then when you show up at a work-site they give you a health and safety lecture and, more importantly, take you around for an orientation tour of the place which invariably includes the whereabouts of the fire extinguishers, the first aid kit, who to expect lead from and where to get to in case there’s an emergency etc. Then they give you what they call ‘PPE’, personal protective equipment, to put on which is somewhat based on knights’ armour of ancient times.

You wear a high visibility jacket that near as make no difference can be sighted from the moon, steel cap boots which in most cases are so heavy you end up taller in the evening than you were at the start of the day, and hard helmet in case there is a possibility of an overhead bustle of any sort, even if that possibility is only a bird flying overhead relieving itself on you, you also wear eye protection which is sort of a face mask, ear protection, hand protection and so on. And then would you believe what they say to you?

They say it’s quite hazardous to put this PPE on. That’s because however it protects you, and in innumerable incidents everyday it sure does, it does absolutely nothing to the hazard or hazards for which you are wearing it. Measures not just include really pedantic appraisals of potential mishaps and nerdy remedies to cap them all but also work safe obstinately using media, television, radio, newspapers etcetera, to inform workers and employers what must they do to protect themselves against accidents and injuries, and what should they be doing in case the end up with one.

Predictably, all this comes at a cost. On the one hand it means that people with relatively small budgets towards their business struggle to kick-start or keep going with any sort of miniature industrial operation, like cottage industries in China, India, and Pakistan for instance, with hopes to evolve into something bigger and better, on the other hand, the sheer expense of all these safety requisites means that it is increasingly difficult for the manufacturers here to compete with parts of the world where hiring and engaging labour is much, much cheaper. The result speaks for itself, clear and loud. Put it this way that if Australia was a box-set of toys, one of its pieces would have ‘Made in China’ written on it, the others would have had ‘Vietnam’, ‘Cambodia’, ‘India’ and so on.

It says here in a 2010 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that 442 people died as results of calamities at work. That’s rather good, they seem to say, on the basis that the year before, in 2009, 496 people were killed by their work, which is a whopping six per cent more. In the last five years, not including 2011, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by work related accidents here in Australia. 3,000! That’s an average of around one and a half deaths per day for crying out loud. And when you allow these numbers in along with the niceties of how Occupation, Health and Safety affairs are disciplined here, how fantastically well and without fail they are designed, implemented and monitored in this country, you simply cannot believe these statistics. These numbers are genuinely staggering, mind boggling, unbelievable.

This got me thinking. How many people die in work-related incidences in Pakistan? Consider, first of all, that Pakistan’s population is some eight times that of Australia. This should suggest that 12 people in Pakistan meet their deaths at work every day. But then that’s wrong, surely. That’s because you ought to weigh in the fact that this deduction is mounted on a rather outlandish assumption that Pakistan too has the same work-safety measures instated and functioning as that in Australia. They are obviously not. The truth of the matter is that the actual number of such deaths per day in Pakistan is in folds of 12 for certain – for every single day.

I don’t care how neurotic the Australian principles of work safety are, or what it costs the nation in terms of economic growth, even if the government in Canberra announces tomorrow that everyone at work is required to wear a full face helmet like that of the Stig of BBC’s Top Gear, I don’t care how heavy steel cap boots are, or how an alien eyes-protection goggles make you look, or how the high visibility jacket makes you a moving cat’s-eye. What really matters is the fact that not just the government in-charge but people too respect the value of human life, and how much it matters to the lives around it. It’s all very commendable, this Australian integrity of work-safety ethics.