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Road Safety Dept., NIOSH and Socso cooperate to promote safe driving culture 

Sabah Times 

17th January, 2012

 KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Road Safety Department (RSD) will continue to enhance cooperation with the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Social Security Organisation (Socso) Sabah in an effort to reduce road accidents among workers. RSD director, Herdiansah Abdul Karim, said, through intensive and continuous training on safe driving culture among employees, whether in public or private sector would help to minimize the risk of accidents while commuting between home and work place.

In this regard, he said, smart partnerships between the agencies responsible for the preparation of defensive driving training, i.e. NIOSH Sabah and Labuan region, as well as those responsible for welfare of workers, such as Socso would be enhanced.

“Both agencies have the same objectives as RSD Sabah, which is to minimize the risk of road accidents among workers. Therefore, we will work with both agencies to organise training, seminars and workshops in an integrated manner for employers and employees,” he said here, yesterday.

Herdiansah said, based on the 2010 report issued by Socso, travel or ‘commuting’ accident rates for every 10,000 workers from 2006 to 2010 in the Malaysia had increased from 32 accidents in 2006 to 40 accidents in 2010.

“This rate is expected to increase in the absence of a proactive approach by employers to send their workers for training on defensive driving,” he said.

In view of this, he hoped the agencies in the public and private sectors would make specific provisions for their staff to attend training organized by NIOSH.

“This is necessary to ensure that employees are adequately trained and will apply what they have learned in their daily tasks. I believe the training provided by NIOSH is the best through an intensive training module which covers the theory and practice by highlighting what must be done by a driver,” he said.

Herdiansah said, besides NIOSH, RSD will also work with external training institutes such as the Sabah Skills & Technology Centre (SSTC), which provide the same training besides having facilities like a ‘driving simulator’ for the purposes of assessing the driving performance of participants.

“Therefore, I hope the public and private sectors will see this initiative as an opportunity to provide training to their employees and as a way to show their concern to their workers,” he said.