Labour Minister Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando said some organisations are weighing the cost of preventing workplace accidents against the compensation payable after one, rather than prioritising protecting workers, the Daily Mirror reported at 4.40 p.m. on Wednesday.
He was opening a seminar at the Department of Labour in Narahenpita to mark National Occupational Safety and Health Week, and argued that workplace safety should be treated as an investment in human life rather than an additional cost.
“Workplace safety should be treated as an investment in human life rather than an additional cost. The value of a worker’s life cannot be measured in monetary terms.”
The two arguments worth isolating
Ministerial safety speeches are routine. Two of the claims in this one are not, and both are economic rather than moral.
The first is the allegation above — that firms are running a comparison between prevention spending and expected compensation liability, and acting on the cheaper number. That is a specific charge about corporate decision-making, not a general appeal for care, and it implies that compensation levels are low enough to make under-investment rational.
The second is a competitive-disadvantage argument for regulation. Fernando said common safety standards were needed across organisations so that employers who invest in protecting workers are not placed at a competitive disadvantage. Taken together with the first claim, this is a straightforward description of a race to the bottom: if prevention costs more than compensation, the firm that spends on safety is penalised in the market, and only a uniform floor fixes it. The Minister did not say what that floor would be, or whether the government intends to legislate one.
He pointed to Japan, where he said strong safety standards were built through years of experience, social intervention and policy change, and said occupational safety should go beyond meeting legal requirements to become part of workplace culture. Employers, employees and other stakeholders shared responsibility, he said, and human life, workers’ rights and dignity must take precedence over economic considerations.
Fernando also said investment in safety could raise efficiency and productivity while reducing fatalities, property damage, production disruptions and financial losses — and turned to climate change, saying collective action was needed and that economically vulnerable communities suffer most from environmental damage and natural disasters. He said the government had introduced measures over the past two years to restore economic stability whose benefits were not always immediately visible.
The Deputy Minister names the reason, without the numbers
Deputy Labour Minister Mahinda Jayasinghe told the event that occupational safety must become an established culture rather than mere legal compliance, and said several hazardous incidents including fires had been reported at Sri Lankan workplaces recently, with the loss of human lives.
That claim is consistent with this newsroom’s own recent coverage, though no filing connects the two. Within the past five weeks Sri Lanka has seen a fatal gas explosion at the Chinese-built nephrology hospital in Polonnaruwa that drew four separate investigations, a coconut timber products factory fire at Madampe, a fuel station fire at Katugastota, a computer shop fire at Welisara, and on Monday a mattress showroom gutted at Panadura. Most were commercial or industrial premises; the Polonnaruwa blast is the one with confirmed deaths.
What neither minister provided is a number. An occupational safety week opened at the Department of Labour is the natural occasion to publish the national workplace fatality and injury count, the trend against previous years, or a sectoral breakdown. No such figure appears in the filing — not for deaths, not for reported accidents, not for inspections or prosecutions. A search of this archive finds no national workplace-fatality statistic published at any point in 2026.
That absence matters to the Minister’s own case. The claim that firms are choosing compensation over prevention is an empirical one, and the compensation and accident data held by his own department is what would establish it.
The legislative context the speech does not mention
Sri Lanka’s labour statutes are in the middle of a consolidation. President Dissanayake said on Monday that about twelve separate labour laws are being merged into unified legislation, that a draft bill has been formulated, and that reviewing and finalising it “will take some time” — the only one of four pending bills he declined to put a date on, while saying most would reach Parliament by February.
Neither the Minister nor his deputy said whether occupational safety and health provisions form part of that consolidation, or whether the “common standards” Fernando called for would be delivered through it.
Not reported
No workplace fatality, injury, inspection or prosecution figures are given, and no evidence is offered for the claim that firms weigh prevention against compensation. The filing does not identify the sectors concerned, name any organisation, or say what current compensation levels are.
It does not report the dates of National Occupational Safety and Health Week, who else addressed the seminar, how many attended, or whether employer bodies and trade unions were represented. Jayasinghe’s “several hazardous incidents” are not itemised, dated or located, and no death toll is attached. Nothing is said about whether new regulations, a code of practice or an inspection drive will follow, nor about the resourcing of the Department of Labour’s factory inspectorate.
This article is single-sourced. No other verified newsroom had filed on the seminar at the time of writing.
