The Occupational Health and Safety Department issued 150 notices for violations in meat packing plants and alcohol distilleries in 2022. Besides the official notices, 5 orders were issued for the interdiction of machinery and equipment that were in precarious situations with serious and imminent risk to employees/operators. This is the partial outcome of the Agribusiness Industry Inspection Project, which started in January and aims to inspect 71 companies from the respective industries with 100 or more employees by the end of the year.
The data is released on July 27, the National Day for the Prevention of Accidents at Work and coincides with the National Campaign for the Prevention of Accidents at Work (Canpat) of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
The inspection, as explains the inspector Amarildo Borges de Oliveira, coordinator of the project, consists mainly in evaluating, within the industrial sector, the safety conditions of the machines and equipment regarding the protection of the workers that operate them.
Decent and safe work
The project aims to promote decent and safe work with the purpose of reducing the rates of accidents and occupational illnesses through compliance inspections in agrobusiness industry.
Justification
The activities in the meat packing plants sector, notes Amarildo Borges, present high rates of work accidents and diseases. The machines in the production area are often noisy and unhealthy due to the cold and humidity, which leads to occupational diseases.
The inspector notes that the underreporting of Work Accident Communication (CAT) is still evident, especially in cases of work-related illness, meaning that the numbers are much higher than known. “Thus, the development of the project is necessary, since it seeks to increase the number of inspections in primary economic activities and focuses on compliance with the rules of occupational health and safety, in order to reduce the number of occupational accidents and diseases.
Canpat
The National Campaign for the Prevention of Accidents at Work, which is coordinated by the Regional Labor Superintendence of Mato Grosso (SRTb/MT), is an action developed by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in partnership with other bodies with the aim of making society aware of the importance of a culture of prevention of accidents and work-related illnesses. The apex of the campaign is the National Occupational Accident Prevention Day, celebrated on July 27.