The banner says “China-EU Safe Production Statistics Project (Liuzhou) Launch Event” and described the official start of the OS pilot project.
The first official launch for the Occupational Safety side of the project took place between 1-3 August 2022 in Liuzhou, Guangxi, China. 59 attendees participated in the event, among them 13 statisticians and production safety officials from Guangxi provincial and Liuzhou municipal Emergency Management authorities as well as 40 EHS managers from 20 enterprises.
The event was initiated on 1 August 2022 with a meeting between the IIEM, the DGUV, and provincial as well as local Emergency Management bureaus. Han Jiaye of the IIEM and Wang Yi of the DGUV introduced themselves and the project to the leaders and officials of Guangxi and Liuzhou emergency authorities. Song Zhufeng, Chief of Liuzhou Municipal EM authorities, presented the production safety and accident data management work in Liuzhou, explained the local government‘s motivation in joining in the pilot, and gave an overview of selected enterprises. The two sides exchanged thoughts on the ways to reassure and motivate the enterprises, which include explicit guarantee of the project team and the local authorities of data security and privacy.
The second day of the event saw strong supportive speeches by Lu Xiaoping, Deputy Director General of the Guangxi Provincial Emergency Management Bureau, and Song Zhufeng, explaining the implementation plan to the enterprises, followed by almost a full day of training of the EHS managers and local MEM statisticians in the new methodology. The training concluded at end of the day in a post training assessment with satisfactory results by the trainees.
On 3 August 2022, the third and last day of the official launch in Liuzhou, the project team visited Liuzhou Steel Group and Guangxi Construction Group, two enterprises participating in the pilot, introducing the pilot and methodology to top management of the enterprises, gathering feedback from EHS Managers and workers from local workstations, and reassuring enterprise management of data security and political support.
The candid discussion among the project team, the local officials and the enterprises showed strong political support and strong operational interest from the enterprises. Both IIEM and the enterprises would like to learn from the DGUV how to prevent underreporting, which was a serious concern for all participants. The technical feedback gathered from statisticians and EHS Managers was very helpful for improving the questionnaires that are to be used in the data collection. All in all, this was a great start to the data collection and all participants look forward to the cooperation.
