'Seoul Declaration Likely to
Proliferate Global
Occupational Safety & Health'

An int'l forum held in Seoul to translate the declaration into action.

Across the world, about 270 million workers suffer from industrial accidents annually, some 160 million people suffer from occupational diseases per year and more than 2 million die of the effects of industrial accidents annually, data made available in 2005 show.
In Korea in 2007 alone, 90,147 people were tallied as industrial accident victims and 2,406 people died. The direct and indirect economic losses, caused by industrial accidents, were tallied at more than 16.2 trillion won. Days of work loss, caused by industrial accidents, are found to be about 60 times as high as those caused by labor disputes.
As safety and health at work emerges as a major pending issue across the globe lately, about 500 experts from Korea and abroad got together at Coex in Seoul on Sept. 10 to discuss detailed action plans to promote occupational safety and health around the world.
The forum, organized by the Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency (KOSHA), was designed to proliferate the Seoul Declaration on Safety and Health at Work, adopted by the XVIII World Congress on Safety and Health at Work held in Seoul on this past June 29 and to help each party discuss how to translate it into action.
Representatives from such international institutions as the International Labor Organization (ILO), the International Social Security Association (ISSA) as well as those from labor, management and government in Korea participated in lively panel discussions. They included Seiji Machida, chemical safety engineer and acting chief of the Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the ILO, and Hans-Horst Konkolewsky, ISSA secretary general and Ramabhadran Srimivasan, director of business in East Asia at DuPont.
Sameera Maziad Al-Tuwaijri, former chief of the Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the ILO spoke about the role of international organizations for the implementation of the Seoul Declaration of safety and health at work, while Konkolewsky made his presentation about the roles of social security institutions for the