The occupational safety and health internship program answers the market demand for competent and skilled safety and health practitioners. This programme is a 12 weeks long intensive training experience that comprises of class and field work accomplished by seasoned trainers and practitioners at EISMAT and select host companies respectively.
Their mission in field attachment to select host companies is to initiate, innovate and promote process improvements in safety and health in those workplaces.
GOAL OF PROGRAMME
Over and over we continue to witness around our community or even experience for ourselves the pains and suffering associated with workplace accidents, injuries or ill-health inflicted on thousands or so of Ugandans fending a living from their respective occupations. We know one way to improve this situation is by building the capacity of employers to manage workplace safety and health as a legal compliance requirement in Uganda. Our choice of approach is to offer OSH training and exposure graduate human resource that have been formed into scientists, engineers and technologies in the various universities in Uganda
The essence of this programme is to impress and initiate upon such scientists a possibility of safety and health career. This goal is motivated by the evident market demand for competent and skilled safety and health practitionersthat will contribute significantly to middle income status Uganda aims to achieve in the near future.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
This programme focused on building the student’s technical competencies, skills and attitude to provide leadership as Safety and Health practitioners working to make the workplace safer and healthier. As such the theory and practical sessions sought to impart knowledge and skills that are measurable and verifiable in the productivity of students when assigned tasks, responsibilities or assignments at their workstations/host companies. As below are the measurable and verifiable success indicators expected of the student who has completed this programme.
Safety and Health awareness:the student can demonstrate understanding and interpretation workplace safety and health concepts, initiatives or programs. This means the ability to use and interpret safety terminology in a workplace.
Safety Task accomplishment: the student capability to apply the skill independentlyto well-known, routine and non-routine workplace safety and health tasks under supervision. This means the ability to execute to an appreciable degree of proficiency: safety inspections, audits, training and communications.
Positive Safety Attitude: the interns effectively adapts, influences and inspires self and others in a workplace to work safely. This means the ability to initiate, promote and sustain safety behavioral change in a workplace.
Creative mastery:the student applies the theoreticalconcepts and the practiced skill critically andcreatively to new safety and health workplace challenges.
The application process concluded a face to face pre-qualification interview that sought to establish the student’s suitability for admission into the programme. The assessment was scored based on the bare minimum functional abilities and competencies of safety practitioner namely: ability to communicate effectively, time management, engage effectively, influence others and more
