Chapter 4 - Page 2
Source: AMICA and Seacare Authority
Note: The employee numbers and hours worked relate to employees covered by the Seafarers Act. The hours worked data is adjusted to a 12 or 14 hour day.
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Variable contractor requirements in the offshore sector pose unique risks, necessitating constant risk assessment and hazard reduction strategies to maintain strong OHS performance
Figure 1: Numbers of employees and accepted claims 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: Seacare and AMICA
Figure 1 graphically represents the downward movement in the number of claims reported to AMICA over the last three years and the upward movement in the number of seafarers reported to the Seacare Authority in the Seacare scheme in 2002–03, continuing the pattern commenced in 2000–01. The historically low number of claims in 2002–03 suggests that notwithstanding the increase in claims in 2000–01 over the 1999–00 claims figure, the downward movement over time in the number of claims being made and reported to AMICA is continuing.
Figure 2: Claim rate (accepted claims reported as a proportion of seafarers) 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: Seacare and AMICA
Figure 2 shows the claim rate using accepted claims reported to AMICA. The claim rateof 4.32% shows a continuing downward movement in the claims rate since 2000–01, using this measure. The claim rate of 4.32% in 2002–03 is a decrease of 10.4% over 2001–02 and indicates that the claim rate, based on accepted claims, has continued to fall over the past two years.
Figure 3: Claims lodged rate (all claims reported as a proportion of seafarers) 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: Seacare and AMICA
Figure 3 shows the claim rate using all claims reported to AMICA. Reported claims include claims that have been rejected, or could in the future be rejected, those that are currently in dispute and those that are pending a decision. The claim rate of 4.86% shows a continuing downward movement in the claims rate since 2000–01, using this measure. The claim rate of 4.86% in 2002–03 is a decrease of 9.3% over 2001–02.
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Employers and employees are adopting a range of strategies and techniques to minimise the risk of injury in the maritime industry
4.5.2 The OHS (incident) data
The OHS incident data reported to AMSA pursuant to the OHS(MI) Act and regulations is summarised in Table 9.
Table 9: Seacare scheme – core OHS incident data and data on the operation of the OHS Inspectorate under the OHS(MI) Act — 1998–99 to 2002–03
| 1998–99 | 1999–00 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | |
| Incidents reported to AMSA1 | 69 | 78 | 69 | 61 | 78 |
| Dangerous occurrences notified2 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 13 |
| Incidents minus dangerous occurrences | 64 | 70 | 61 | 56 | 65 |
| Investigations under S.87 (re compliance with, or contravention of Act or regulations; accidents and dangerous occurrences) | NA | 23 | 12 | 14 | 12 |
| Prohibition Notices issued under S.93 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Improvement Notices issued under S.98 | 8 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Taking possession of plant, substances or things S91 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Directions given S.92 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Appeals instituted against inspectors' decision S.100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Directions given by the Minister S.114 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| AMSA surveyors trained in enhanced OHS investigation techniques during the year | 15 | 15 | 0 | 21 | 40 |
| Prosecutions commenced | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Prosecutions completed | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Number of full time equivalent employees (OHS(MI) Act)3 | 2 890 | 2 797 | NA | NA | 3 173 |
| Hours worked (OHS(MI) Act)4 | NA | 5 936 119 | NA | NA | 8 294 547 |
Source: AMSA and Seacare Authority
NA = not available
Table 9 indicates that the total number of incidents reported to AMSA in 2002–03 increased to 78 compared to 61 reported in 2001–02. This is a significant increase of 28%. The number of dangerous occurrences reported to AMSA also increased from five in 2001–02 to 13 in 2002–03, an increase of 160%.
1. Incidents reported to AMSA include where the employee is incapacitated for five or more successive working days; where the employee sustains a serious personal injury; or a dangerous occurrence.
2. A dangerous occurrence is where there is an incident at the workplace and resulted from operations that arose from an undertaking conducted by or for the operator of the workplace and could have caused death or serious personal injury or incapacity of an employee for five or more successive working days.
3. Full time equivalent employees as reported by employers under the OHS(MI) Act.
4. Hours worked as reported by employers under the OHS(MI) Act. Note however that the seafarer numbers on which the Tables and Figures in sections 4.5.4 to 4.5.8 and at Appendix 1 are based are those reported under the Seafarers Act set out in Table 8, unless otherwise stated.
AMSA reviews all incidents reported and when considered necessary conducts an investigation pursuant to its investigation powers under the OHS(MI) Act. The number of investigations conducted by AMSA decreased in 2002–03 to 12 compared to 14in 2001–02. Given that the number of investigations decreased a possible reason for the increase in incidents reported may be the active encouragement by AMSA surveyors and auditors to ship operators to report incidents.
During 2002–03 AMSA conducted a number of minor incident investigations and two serious incident investigations. One serious incident investigation involved a seafarer falling from a height. The other serious incident investigation involved a seafarer injured during buoy recovery operations. The Inspectorate's investigations of incidents resulted in a range of hazard solutions being proposed for implementation by operators.
The 78 incidents reported to AMSA included 54 incidents where the employee was incapacitated for five or more successive days. AMICA reported 118 workers' compensation claims of one week or more days duration under the Seafarers Act, the majority of which would be expected to have arisen at the workplace from the operator's undertaking. Seacare, AMICA and AMSA are continuing to work together to identify any under-reporting of OHS incidents using workers' compensation claims data, and to provide robust explanations for the different reporting results under the Seafarers and OHS(MI) Acts.
Table 10: Incident rate (incidents as a proportion of seafarers)1998–99 to 2002–03
| 1998-99 | 1999-00 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | |
| Number of incidents | 69 | 78 | 69 | 61 | 78 |
| Number of seafarers | 3 530 | 2 800 | 2 895 | 3 152 | 3 173 |
| Incident rate (%) | 1.95% | 2.78% | 2.38% | 1.90% | 2.45% |
Source: AMSA and Seacare Authority
Note: The denominator used for 2002-03 (number of seafarers) is the full time equivalent (FTE) reported by employers under the OHS(MI) Act – in all previous years it is the Seafarer Act employee figure, due to the unavailability of a FTE figure.
Table 10 indicates that the incident rate, measured using incidents reported as a proportion of seafarers (full time equivalents), increased significantly in 2002–03 compared to 2001–02. There is no way of determining from the statistics whether this increase is due to more incidents occurring or better reporting of incidents to AMSA.
Figure 4: Accepted claims and incidents reported (accidents and dangerous occurrences) 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: AMICA and AMSA
Figure 4 indicates that the convergence of claims and incidents reported over the past five years continues, notwithstanding a slight variation in 2000–01.
4.5.3 Selected incident reports (reporting accidents and dangerous occurrences)
Figures 5 and 6 which follow provide an overview of selected trends and patterns from OHS incident data.
Figure 5: Number of incidents by location 1998–99 to 2002–03
Source: AMSA
Figure 5 indicates that most incidents are continuing to occur in the deck/cargo spaces. Incidents occurring in the machinery spaces and accommodation areas also contribute to a significant number of incidents. There have been significant increases in 2002–03 of reported incidents occurring in the deck/cargo spaces and the accommodation block compared to 2001–02.
Figure 6: Incidents reported by mechanism of injury 2002–03
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Source: AMSA
Figure 6 shows that in 2002–03 most reported incidents were body stressing injuries, accounting for 34% of incidents. Falls from the same level and falls from a height contributed to 22% of incidents followed by being hit by objects (moving, falling and stationary).
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The nature of on-board work combined with the type of equipment in use provides many challenges to seafarers to avoid the key injury mechanisms such as body stressing, falls and being hit by or hitting objects
4.5.4 OHS performance – the injury incidence and injury frequency rate
The incidence of injury and frequency of injury (based on compensation claims data) are two nationally recognised high-level outcome indicators which provide a useful analysis of OHS performance and can provide a helpful indicator of trends in a scheme's OHS performance. The incidence and frequency rates recorded in this part of the report are, unless otherwise indicated, based on accepted claims as reported to AMICA through compensation claims data. They should not be confused with the incident and frequency rates reported in section 4.6 which relate to claims involving one week or more compensated, and which, until 2000–01 in the case of the Seacare scheme, excluded disease claims.
A new injury frequency series is being commenced in this annual report. It uses unadjusted hours worked data as the divisor, i.e. it uses all hours worked as reported by employers for all seafarers employed over the year — it is not adjusted to 12 hours and 14 hours for the blue water and offshore sectors respectively. Generally the employer reported hours worked data assumes 24 hours per day while on board. The need for this new data series has emerged from comments made by employers that the divisor used by most employers in calculating the enterprise Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTFIR) for seafarers is generally 24 hours. It is hoped that inclusion of the new series will provide frequency rate data at the industry level which is more meaningful to employers.
Figure 7: The Seacare injury incidence rate (accepted claims per 1000 employees) 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: Seacare Authority and AMICA
Figure 7 shows that the number of injuries per 1 000 employees in 2002–03 (43.15) remains high. However, the incidence of injuries based on accepted claims has decreased over the previous year by 10.6% and is the lowest ever recorded in the Seacare scheme. The significant reduction in the incidence rate suggests that OHS performance has improved since 2001–02.
Figure 8: The Seacare injury frequency rate (compensation claims per million hours worked) 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: Seacare and AMICA
Figure 8 illustrates the Seacare injury frequency rate using three different measures. The first column for each year shows the injury frequency rate using all accepted claims and adjusted hours worked data (adjusted to 12 or 14 hours for the blue water and offshore sectors respectively). The second column for each year shows the injury frequency rate using all accepted claims but uses non adjusted (higher) hours worked data. The third column for each year uses accepted claims of one week or more compensated, combined with non adjusted hours worked data. This measure is chosen because it more closely coincides with the injury frequency specifications which result in the frequency rate reported in the national CPM report.
The data confirms the pattern identified in Figure 7. It similarly shows that (using column one data, which can be compared with data previously published in Seacare Authority annual reports) the frequency rate in 2002–03 remains high (19.99 injuries for every one million hours worked). However, it also shows that the injury frequency rate has reduced by 14.17% over 2001–02. The frequency rate for 2002–03 is the lowest frequency rate recorded in the Seacare scheme.
4.5.5 Analysis of injuries
The following sections disaggregate claims data, enabling a more detailed analysis of injuries.
Table 11: Nature of claims 1998–99 to 2002–03
| 1998-99 | 1999-00 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | |
| Death | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aids or appliances | 0 | 18 | 21 | 22 | 20 |
| Lost wages | 186 | 122 | 137 | 119 | 106 |
| Medical expenses | 23 | 138 | 163 | 140 | 146 |
| Non-economic loss | 0 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 0 |
| Property loss | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 1 |
| Rehabilitation | 0 | 57 | 51 | 57 | 50 |
| Travel expenses | 0 | 65 | 61 | 63 | 56 |
| Household and attendant care | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 6 |
| Permanent impairment | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 4 |
| Total | 212 | 410 | 445 | 420 | 389 |
Source: AMICA
Note: Up to 1998-99 the claim form contained fewer options for identification of all types of compensation. The lack of data against some categories does not mean that the claim did not involve this category but no disaggregated data is available. From 1999-00 data includes disaggregation of the categories of compensation — in many cases the seafarer claimed more than one category of compensation.
Two key observations can be derived from Table 11. First, it shows that there is a consistent pattern of claim types over time, and second, it confirms the analysis provided in other sections of the report that participation in rehabilitation programs is low in the Seacare scheme.
Figure 9: Accepted claims by job classification 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: AMICA
Figure 9 identifies the number of claims and trends across the four key occupational groupings. This figure shows a decrease in the percentage of claims for deck officers and integrated ratings and an increase in the percentage of claims for catering staff and a slight increase for engineers.
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Safety training is a key method for preventing injuries on vessels
Figure 10: Percent claims compared to percent seafarers per age range 2002–03
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Source: Seacare and AMICA
Figure 10 shows that nearly 60% of seafarers are over the age of 40 and contribute to 73% of claims. The age groups with the highest proportion of claims are the 40 – 44 and 50 – 54 age groups. Each has 21% (totalling 42%) of the total claims whereas they only make up 29% of total seafarers. The graph also indicates the 55+ age group has the highest number of seafarers (17%) supporting the anecdotal evidence of the ageing workforce in the maritime industry.
Table 12: Location of person at time of injury 1998–99 to 2002–03
| 1998-99 | 1999-00 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | ||||||
| On Duty on the ship | 180 | 85.3% | 135 | 86.0% | 164 | 91.1% | 135 | 88.8% | 122 | 84.1% |
| On Duty on the ship on break | 0 | 0.0% | 4 | 2.5% | 2 | 1.1% | 2 | 1.3% | 3 | 2.1% |
| On Duty away from the ship | 0 | 0.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 1 | 0.6% | 1 | 0.7% | 0 | 0.0% |
| Off Duty on the ship | 27 | 12.8% | 4 | 2.5% | 7 | 3.9% | 9 | 5.9% | 14 | 9.7% |
| Off Duty away from the ship | 0 | 0.0% | 3 | 1.9% | 3 | 1.7% | 1 | 0.7% | 1 | 0.7% |
| Travelling to or from a ship | 1 | 0.5% | 4 | 2.5% | 2 | 1.1% | 3 | 2.0% | 1 | 0.7% |
| Travelling to or from a training facility | 1 | 0.5% | 1 | 0.6% | 0 | 0.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 2 | 1.4% |
| Study | 2 | 0.9% | 2 | 1.3% | 1 | 0.6% | 1 | 0.7% | 1 | 0.7% |
| Other | 0 | 0.0% | 4 | 2.5% | 0 | 0.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 1 | 0.7% |
|
Total |
211 | 100% | 157 | 100% | 180 | 100% | 152 | 100% | 145 | 100% |
Source: AMICA
Table 12 indicates that 130 or 89.7% of accepted claims occurred on duty (including journey claims and claims while studying) and that 15 or 10.3% of accepted claims occurred off duty in 2002–03. Of the 130 claims occurring on duty, three were journey claims and one occurred during study. The number of off duty claims in 2002–03 represents an increase in the proportion of off duty claims relative to 2001–02,from 7% to 10%.
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Cargo loading and unloading from ships servicing offshore oil and gas facilities requires high quality safety management
Figure 11: Accepted claims by location on the ship 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: AMICA
Figure 11 shows that during 2002–03 there has been a decrease in injuries in deck spaces, reversing a pattern of increase in injuries in these areas of ships over previous years. However, there is a corresponding increase in injuries in the machinery spaces, galley, gangway/pilot and stairs areas of ships.
Figure 12: Accepted claims by body part 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: AMICA
Figure 12 indicates that the parts of a seafarer's body most likely to be subject to injury are the trunk, upper limbs and lower limbs. In 2002–03 most injuries occurred to the lower limbs of seafarers, with a corresponding decline in injuries in the upper limbs compared to previous years.
Figure 13: Accepted claims by mechanism of injury 1998–99 to 2002–03
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Source: AMICA
Figure 13 shows that falls, slips and trips injuries were the most prevalent mechanism of injury in 2002–03, and that this type of injury has risen since 2001–02. Falls, slips and trips is followed by body stressing and being hit by moving object, both of which have declined relative to 2000–1 and 2001–02. Biological factors (for example, fungal invasions, viral infections) were a less significant cause of injuries in 2002–03 relative to 2001–02, as was mental stress.
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Maritime employers are adopting better methods to minimise injury in circumstances involving heavy lifting in confined spaces
Figure 14: Accepted claims by injury/disease type 1998-99 to 2002-03
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Source: AMICA
Sprains and strains continue to be the major injury type and have risen relative to 2001–02. However, most other injury types have declined relative to 2001–02.
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Falls, slips and trips remain one of the highest causes of workplace compensable injuries in the Australian maritime industry