Chemicals Risk Management Improved Competitiveness of SMEs

Chemicals Risk Management Improved Competitiveness of SMEs Dealing with Agro-Chemicals

In our Newsletter no. 3, the world competitiveness report demonstrated the relationship between competitiveness and  occupational health and safety of selected countries. Thailand is listed in the range of one of the lowest competitive countries, and the need to improve this situation is obvious. Therefore, the Royal Thai Government requested to the German Government   to implement a project on this issue.

One of the cross-sector projects, Risk Management for Handling of Hazardous Materials by SMEs in the Bangpoo Area (or Chemicals Risk Management Project), jointly implemented by GTZ and Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand (IEAT) together with Department of Industrial Works (DIW) of Ministry of Industry had worked from 2005-2007 on factories processing agro-chemicals. The project has focused on both preventive and corrective issues achieving the following 5 results.

• Result 1 –   Risk Assessment & Risk Profile: This is the first step for chemical safety management in order to identify the chemical inventory, occupational health and safety, fire prevention, evacuation and environmental care.
• Result 2 –   Improvement of Safety Measures: Based on the outcomes from the assessment and analysis, improvement measures have  been  implemented  in order to fill the gaps and minimize the risks in the handling of  chemicals.  This result is classed as a preventive measure.
• Result 3 –   Integrated Contingency Plan: Forward planning is necessary to know what to do by who and when and how in case of emergency to minimize impacts from accidents.
• Result 4 –   Emergency  Management  Information  System:  Emergency responders need technical  information on  how to tackle chemical substances in case of emergencies.
• Result 5 –   Emergency Response System: The system has been set up in order to manage and control emergency situations in industrial estate areas to minimize  or avoid any impact to the public and surrounding communities. The linkage and dependence of the key elements in chemicals risk management are shown as a diagram below.

After 24 months, signs of impact can be observed either on policy level, service level or target group level. Naturally the best sign of impact would be if nothing happens at all! But when welding works has caused a fire at one of the companies, it was effectively extinguished by a trained staff with a newly installed fire extinguisher system before it got out of control. Before joining the project, that company was hardly prepared for such emergency situations: no fire hoses nor functional sprinklers, outdated fire fighting equipment, not to mention the exposure of chemicals to the workers and environment.

The project's expert team members, both international and local, provided comprehensive advisory and consultancy services on several issues covering  Occupational Health & Safety (OHS), Fire Protection (FP), Evacuation and  Environmental  Care (EC),  which  was  followed and implemented step-by-step by the companies. Recently, the above mentioned company received many orders from European based companies. This obviously shows that not only the control of avoidable losses helps the companies, but being in compliance with international requirements and criteria for safety measures helps gains acceptance on international markets.

Knowledge dissemination: training course to about 50 government officials on Chemical Safety Management

The project currently is in its exit/transition phase to disseminate successful cases and experiences to other industrial areas covering 7 industrial estates and 9 provincial industrial offices with dense processing of agro-chemicals. The “GTZ Chemical Safety Management Guide” drafted by the international consultants together with the local expert team focusing on four key issues for safety management in the factories: Occupational Health and Safety, Fire Prevention, Environmental Care and Evacuation. It is intended that industrial estates and provincial inspectors use this guideline as a tool for providing advisory services for improvement of chemicals management to SMEs. An introductory course, kick-off training and networking among the inspectors was successfully organized by DIW together with GTZ and IEAT as co-organizers in August 2007. This will ensure the sustainable capacity building and development of the chemicals risk management issue in Thailand country-wide.