Thesis (MBA.) --University of Limpopo, 2008 / Chemicals are found to be enormously dangerous on the health and safety criteria. In academic laboratories, chemical safety has always been a major concern. Safety risks are either not perceived at all, or perceived to be less dangerous than what they actually are. The climate of safety in any organization consists of employees’ attitudes towards, and perceptions of safety behaviour. In academic departments, safety is influenced by factors such as the organisational environment, management attitude and commitment, the nature of the job or task, and the personal attributes of the individual. This study is concerned with safety climate and chemical management practices in academic departments. More specifically, it investigates the safety perceptions, attitudes, and chemical management behaviours of university employees. It represents the empirical results of a questionnaire survey administered in a university department and direct observations of safe and unsafe chemical management behaviours, targeting employees who work with chemicals. Based upon the survey analysis results, this study demonstrates that employees in the academic departments under study have a good degree of risk awareness and a relatively high degree of safety consciousness. The results also reveal employees’ intentional unsafe chemical management behaviours. Further, it was found, empirically, that overall employees’ intentional unsafe behaviours seem to be best explained by employees’ perceptions of management attitude and commitment to safety, social and physical work environment, priority for safety, as well as their perception of the risk they are generally exposed to in their work environment. The study, thus, establishes that perceptions of management attitudes and actions have a direct effect on employees’ behaviour. There is a positive correlation between workers’ safety climate and chemical management safe behaviour in academic departments.

<p>The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) is an international framework on sound chemicals management with the objective that “by the year 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on the environment and human health”. SAICM was adopted at the International Conference on Chemicals Management in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in February 2006. To prepare countries to be able to implement SAICM the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is currently running Pilot Projects in three developing countries and one county with economy in transition: Belarus, Pakistan, Tanzania and Panama. Between October and December 2007 we were doing a Minor Field Study in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, interviewing people involved in the implementation of their Pilot Project which is running from 2006-2009. Our paper consists of two parts, one descriptive and one analysing. In the first part we describe the initiation, the formulation, the implementation and the evaluation of SAICM and the Pilot Project in Tanzania and in the second part we analyse opportunities and hindrances for a successful implementation of the Pilot Project and SAICM in Tanzania. How is the UN governing the implementation, what resources of finances, knowledge, institutions and time does Tanzania have and how is the implementation influenced by different actors interests? We argue that the there is mixture of the top-down and the bottom-up models and that this mixture is fruitful, we argue that Tanzania has enough finances, knowledge and time to implement SAICM but lack institutions, and finally that the different interests are not too various to harm the process.</p>

The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) is an international framework on sound chemicals management with the objective that “by the year 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on the environment and human health”. SAICM was adopted at the International Conference on Chemicals Management in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in February 2006. To prepare countries to be able to implement SAICM the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is currently running Pilot Projects in three developing countries and one county with economy in transition: Belarus, Pakistan, Tanzania and Panama. Between October and December 2007 we were doing a Minor Field Study in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, interviewing people involved in the implementation of their Pilot Project which is running from 2006-2009. Our paper consists of two parts, one descriptive and one analysing. In the first part we describe the initiation, the formulation, the implementation and the evaluation of SAICM and the Pilot Project in Tanzania and in the second part we analyse opportunities and hindrances for a successful implementation of the Pilot Project and SAICM in Tanzania. How is the UN governing the implementation, what resources of finances, knowledge, institutions and time does Tanzania have and how is the implementation influenced by different actors interests? We argue that the there is mixture of the top-down and the bottom-up models and that this mixture is fruitful, we argue that Tanzania has enough finances, knowledge and time to implement SAICM but lack institutions, and finally that the different interests are not too various to harm the process.