Lack of work-safety culture kills

First is the remorseless drive for profits and the treatment of major workplace accidents as "once in a lifetime" events, which are highly unlikely to happen and therefore not worth taking preventive steps against.

Second is the culture of impunity - that a bribe to health and safety inspectors can dispense with the need for expensive and time-consuming employees' training programs or safety improvement measures and that the legal/investigation system can be effectively muzzled. For example, in a recent workplace accident near my condominium in Kuala Lumpur, a young migrant worker fell to his death from a high-rise building and his friends were paid to say that he was depressed and committed suicide. Many such cover-ups may also have happened in China and elsewhere. Moreover, an Apple or a General Motors doesn't risk losing its reputation if a major accident takes place in a Chinese company it has outsourced its manufacturing to.

Third, the issue of workplace health and safety is not something only the bosses should be concerned about; it is important for workers too. In what seemed inconceivable only a few years ago, Chinese manufacturing and construction workers are in short supply. For the first time, workers have real muscle to demand their rights on workplace health and safety, yet too often they are prepared to trade their health for a few hundred yuan added to their monthly salary.

Some media reports say that the workers in the Kunshan factory were paid relatively high wages of 5,000 yuan ($806) a month but had to work and live in terrible conditions, which ultimately led to the deadly aluminum dust explosion. Compromising one's health or working in hazardous conditions for a few more dollars is not advisable, but some people feel they have no choice but to do so.

The Chinese government has taken significant strides in recent years to curb major accidents, particularly in the mining sector, and to bring those guilty of gross negligence to account. But a cultural shift in health and safety awareness cannot be achieved only by imposing judicial punishment on or getting higher premiums for work-related injuries from errant companies.

The efforts to build a culture of health and safety should begin from schools and technical institutes, and extend to workplaces where workers and their union representatives must demand healthy and safe working conditions.

Let the government make 2015 the "Year of Health and Safety" at work and see what kind of transformation could be made.

The author, based in Kuala Lumpur, is an international financial consultant and former fund management expert on the EU-China Social Security Project.