Together To Zero in the north

Friday 25 May 2001

Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) staff in the north of the North Island will gather with community groups in Paihia this month for a three-day conference.

Four Auckland offices and Northland's Whangarei-based office will look at OSH work practices and policy, and how to enhance close working relationships between OSH groups and the community.

"Our focus will be to clarify future business strategies and promote ways of providing a more efficient delivery of OSH education, evaluation and enforcement programmes in the field," said John Forrest, Service Manager, Auckland OSH.

"It’s important to OSH to have this conference in a local area.

"We want a local flavour to remind us of our customers and their needs. Ngapuhi will open the conference and will provide a good setting for us to understand the wide range of cultural groups we deal with. Ngapuhi are being very active here at present in raising their profile to help establish sound local initiatives."

"We also need to continue to align our business strategies to accommodate continued changes in workplaces and workplace operations. Our overall mission is to increase workplace safety."

The Auckland and Northland regions are combining to run the conference over three days from May 30 until June 1 in Paihia.

The conference will involve about 60 people from these regions, and will also be attended by OSH General Manager Bob Hill.

Items to be discussed include the new year's business strategies, standby and callout policies, performance reviews, legal training on Section 16 of HSE Act 1992 as well as Roopu and Aukilani Pasifika presentations.