A new dare-to-speak campaign is launched to encourage workers to speak out about their concerns and convey transportation problems to the relevant authorities and institutions, according to Kim Pagna, country director of the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation (AIP).
He added that the campaign was launched digitally to urge the garment and footwear sectors to ensuring workers have safe means of transportation for their daily commutes.
“As we all know, more than 60 per cent of vehicles that transport our workers from their houses to factories or vice versa are modified cargo trucks. They transport workers in large numbers and overcrowded conditions. This it affects the safety and health of the workers,” he said.
The AIP has been contributing to solutions to the problem since 2017. It set five priority tasks to ensure that workers can travel to work safely.
He added that the first priority was to ensure that truck drivers transporting the workers had the skills and knowledge to drive safely and responsibly. The second was to encourage the drivers to ensure their vehicles were safe, and not overloaded.
The third was for the garment industry to introduce a policy for traffic safety that is widely implemented and disseminated to workers.
He added that the next two points were to encourage workers to participate in motorcycle handing training. Finally, it aimed to ensure that motorcyclists wore approved helmets at all times.
Kim Pagna said the campaign was launched at the factory level and was divided into three groups. The first is traffic safety, made up of representatives from factories, trade unions, and representative of workers and drivers. This group will be provided with training to devise plans for wide dissemination.
The second group is selecting passengers on trucks who will be prepared to speak up. They will undergo training to become the ones who will speak to drivers and encourage them to change from goods truck to passenger vehicles.
“We created this digital dare-to-speak campaign in target factories, but want the information to spread to all factories. When they receive this information, we want the workers to raise their concerns in a constructive manner to help find better and safer means of transportation,” he said.
He added that the campaign is currently running via Facebook, with graphics and posters. In the future, a video will be produced which links the work of his team to the factories where the traffic safety teams are conducting the campaign.
The campaign is currently being conducted at 43 target factories which employ more than 200,000 workers, he said.
