Even today, workplace accidents have affected two workers who were working on a collapsed crane: tragedies that occur and signal to us that we cannot and do not want to stop identifying new systems to encourage companies to adopt all necessary measures to protect female and male workers, including, of course, effective compensation for damages. But despite all the updated regulations, we are not moving towards a model more oriented towards prevention parameters but rather towards sanctions, which always come too late, when the event has already occurred.
Therefore, besides regulatory simplification, training, prevention, and safety culture must become a real priority to protect, first and foremost, the lives of workers, but also the responsibility of employers, in order to achieve productivity and economic growth for the country.
The construction and commerce sectors continue to record an increase in accidents. Occupational diseases reported have also increased, especially in the South and Northwest. But we know well how many people, to avoid risking losing their jobs, do not turn to the agencies overseeing the territory and how much undeclared and especially irregular work is carried out in Italy.
Crucial for constantly improving and updating one’s knowledge on the subject, as well as rights and duties, is the training of workers and employers, with specific courses on protective devices and regulations, and supporting companies that implement programs, concretely rewarding those most attentive to safety.
We continue to propose streamlining a bureaucratic apparatus that often hinders the effectiveness of safety measures, favoring bureaucratic frills and forms that can be collected on a dedicated, more agile platform truly oriented towards prevention, allowing preventive, timely, and targeted interventions on safety.
The issue does not only involve the construction sector but also the Public Administration and various regulations that provide, for example, in personal services, social services, and healthcare, those contracted figures who are currently subject to the parliamentary process of the family caregivers bill with proposals for certification of a possible new professional profile such as Family Assistants – today caregivers, babysitters, escorts for non-self-sufficient people – with a still too evident confusion of roles. Due attention is necessary to avoid certifications with few hours of concrete training, even with a number of hours of pseudo distance learning because the so-called additional poor work does not serve families.
It is necessary to equip personal services with personnel capable of caregiving, supporting the involvement and recognition of the great work of family caregivers who to date are those who care for their relatives with consistency and the awareness that welfare is often only them and who deserve resources at their disposal also to be able to choose what kind of relief they can adopt and perhaps turn to personnel they can trust.
