17 Sep :Shri K.H. Muniyappa, the Minister of state for Shipping, Road Transport & Highways gave away Vishwakarma Rashtriya Puraskar and National Safety Awards for the year 2006 here today. These awards were presented to workers, their representatives and managements in factories and docks for humanize industrial activities and promoting safety and health at work. 28 workers were presented Vishwakarma Rastriya Puraskar while 154 National Safety Awards were given in various categories.
Presenting the awards Shri Muniyappa said that new challenges were emerging due to changing job patterns, rise in contractual work and employment of new technologies but still in the small and medium enterprises where large work force is employed, prevailing safety and health norms are not up to the standard. He stressed the need to adapt pragmatic and practical mechanism to control to prevalence of occupational injuries and to provide health and conduce working conditions to all workers.
Congratulating the awardees, Smt. Sudha Pillai, Secretary of the Ministry of Labour & Employment highlighted recent initiatives taken by the Government for the welfare of the workers and employees of various sectors which include finalisation of National Policy on Occupational Safety, Health and Environment at Workplace
Vishwakarma Rashtriya Puraskar (VRP) is awarded in recognition of outstanding suggestions given by a worker or group of workers and implemented by the management during the previous calendar year resulting in improvement in quality, productivity and working conditions such as safety, health and environmental conservation in the industrial undertakings
The financial savings due to adoption of suggestions of the winning applications of the VRP for the Performance year 2006 were 91.72 crores recurring and 3.04 crores non-recurring in Indian currency and 7.5625 lakhs US$ recurring and Rs. 83.4 lakhs non-recurring in foreign exchange.
The National Safety Awards (NSA) is given in recognition of outstanding safety performance of Industrial establishments, construction sites and ports to stimulate and maintain the interest of both the managements and the workers in accident prevention programmes.