WorkSafeNB’s northeast region hosted health and safety workshops for more than 110 municipal employees and construction contractors yesterday in Bathurst, covering topics such as due diligence, zero tolerance and building a health and safety structure. After reviewing audit results, injuries and fatalities within the municipal sector, WorkSafeNB identified a need for municipalities to expand the knowledge of occupational health and safety management programs and legislative requirements.
The workshops provided specific health and safety education for elected officials, directors, engineers, supervisors with health and safety responsibilities and contractors performing work for municipalities “We focused these sessions on municipalities because they provide such a diverse range of services with high-risk activities –trenching, working with heavy equipment and machinery, and working from heights, for example,” said Pauline Roy, WorkSafeNB’s regional director for the northeast.
While health and safety professionals and WorkSafeNB staff delivered most of the sessions, the mayor of Caraquet, Antoine Landry, gave a workshop on due diligence. Landry shared how a workplace fatality affected his municipality and how this tragedy renewed Caraquet’s commitment to health and safety prevention.
“New Brunswick’s municipalities form the roots of not only our culture but our economy, and are thereby so important to our province’s health. By improving our province’s health and safety infrastructure from the roots up we will continue to maintain and improve on our status as one of the safest provinces in Canada in which to work,” Roy said.