Close to 5,000 employers in industries with risky work have received greetings from the Swedish Work Environment Agency’s inspectors over the course of four years. The risk of accidents is greatest in construction, agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, transport and storage. After the inspection, 82 percent of the inspected employers were required to remedy their deficiencies.
– Our statistics show that many people are injured, become ill, and even lose their lives in similar operations every year, says Erna Zelmin, Director General of the Swedish Work Environment Authority, in a press release.
Among other things, the authority has noted unclear procedures, few or no risk assessments and a lack of knowledge in how to prevent and deal with unhealthy workloads and abusive treatment.
The Work Environment Agency has also made decisions on around 60 immediate bans and around 340 penalty fees. The most common deficiencies in those cases concern, among other things, risks of falling from a great height. In those cases, most employers rectified the deficiencies quickly, according to the authority.