It is a daily dance with death for millions of Vietnamese workers at the places where they are employed. Work related deaths and accidents that can maim a person for life are soaring in the country due to poor safety standards and slack on-site inspections by supervisors.

The urgency of addressing this workers' safety problem was highlighted recently when a site labourer and an engineer at the Binh Loi bridge construction site, in the city, were killed by a falling crane.

Investigations revealed that the crane was cracked and steel sheets fixed by iron pins were used to prevent it from falling apart.

''Death is lurking at every workplace,'' Nguyen Thanh Tai, the deputy chairman of Ho Chi Minh's People's Committee told IPS.

Since the start of the year, 20 workers have lost their lives in 19 work site accidents in Ho Chi Minh City.

And the figures keep climbing year after year.

According to the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour, in 2001, 395 workers were killed in 3,601 accidents. In 2003, the number of accidents reached 3,896 of which 469 were serious ones killing 513 workers.

The Institute of Scientific Research on Labor Protection has found that most workplace accidents are in the construction, transport and industrial sectors and they were a common occurrence in urban centers.

Majority unreported

Ho Chi Minh City, for instance, accounted for 62 deadly accidents that killed 64 people in 2003. In Hanoi last year, 43 serious mishaps killed 44 workers.

But work safety experts believe these figures still do not represent the full extent of the problem, as the majority of accidents go unreported.

"Only a handful of enterprises report accidents in accordance with labour laws,'' Tran Trung Dung, vice director of Ho Chi Minh City's Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (DeLISA) told IPS.

''Apathy from employers and labor inspection teams towards occupational safety and health standards is the main reason for the rise in labor accidents,'' said Dung.

There are about 39.3 million workers in Vietnam employed in different economic sectors, according to the ministry of labour, war invalids, and social affairs.

Ho Chi Minh City's 252 enterprises established with foreign capital have created fewer than 20,000 jobs and the 20,000 private enterprises in the city employ only 170,000. The bulk of workers, however, are employed in public sector enterprises.

According to the ministry, private enterprises reported only 10 percent of total accidents but were responsible for 60 percent of the fatalities, followed by the state-owned sector with 39.5 percent.

Widespread infringement

Alarmingly, labour monitors declare that 50 percent of worksite accidents could have been avoided if employers paid better attention to safety regulations.

''Infringement of safety regulations and standards remain widespread at private and small scale enterprises,'' said Nguyen Van Chien, a researcher at the Institute of Scientific Research on
Labor Protection.

''Many employers pay scant attention to the safety of their workers and some try to save money by cutting back on their labour safety measures,'' Chien told IPS.

He said the failure of employers to replace obsolete or worn out machinery was one of the major causes of accidents at construction sites, textile mills and factories.

Last year, an incident at the Vietnam Machinery Installation Corporation (LILAMA) killed a worker on the Pha Lai power plant No 1. The worker was working at a height of 25 metres, from
which he fell. His safety belt broke, and the worker was killed on impact.

An investigation after the accident showed that it would not have happened if his safety belt had been checked earlier by his supervisor.

But employers are not the only ones to be blamed. Many workers, too, are responsible for their own predicaments by failing to use protective equipment or follow set working procedures.

Labor experts say that between 75 and 80 percent of workers do not receive training on workplace safety. The fact that the majority of labourers from the rural areas have poor literacy levels further compounds the issue.

Lowest span

Duong Thi Kim Loan, a labor expert at the Ho Chi Minh City Trade Union who has surveyed hundreds of workplace accidents, said the majority of labor accidents occur at the beginning or end of the working day.

''This when the worker's attention span is at its lowest. They tend to be more careless during this period,'' he told IPS.

The shortage of labour inspectors also contributes to the gloomy situation.

There are currently only 250 workplace health and safety inspectors for the whole of Vietnam - catering to a workforce of over 39 million workers in the country.

"Ho Chi Minh City has only seven inspectors. If they worked at full capacity, they would spend 650 years to inspect all the enterprises currently present in the city," said DeLISA's Dung.

Another impediment for workers' rights is efforts to seek redress from the courts.

Only a handful of violations against workplace safety conditions have been successful legally.

Even if employers do get prosecuted, the fines are just minimal. Many just treat the matter as an occasional bad luck that can be settled by paying out 16 million dong (US$1,000) to the authorities. - IPS