To promote Taiwan-UK cooperation, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the Ministry of Labor (TW OSHA) co-host the 1st Taiwan-UK Occupational Safety and Health Summit with the Health and Safety Executive of Great Britain (UK HSE) on September 24, 2020 and shared occupational safety & health information and related strategies promotion via webinar. At the Summit, TW OSHA Director General Tzu-Lien Tsou signed the cooperation confirmation with Sarah Albon, Chief Executive of UK HSE and announced future cooperation projects to deepen the bilateral partnership between UK HSE & TW OSHA.

TW OSHA mentioned that Minister Ming-Chun Hsu and Vice Minister San-Quei Lin of the Ministry of Labor attended in person for providing advice. In addition, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, British Office Taipei, the Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organisation (G+), offshore wind farm developers, offshore wind turbine manufacturers and UK contractors all attended the Summit. During the Summit, both TW OSHA & UK HSE shared their outstanding safety and health policies and the best practical experience in order to understand each other better. Meanwhile, both Parties discussed future cooperation projects in five aspects known as offshore wind farm, big data analysis, construction safety, new technology applications and chemical management to build a cooperation model for improving the level of occupational health and safety.

The Ministry of Labor mentioned that UK HSE was the first occupational safety and health regulatory agency having solid policies, rich experience and professional skills and becoming the role model of occupational safety and health fields worldwide. Moreover, on June 10, 2019, TW OSHA and UK HSE signed a MOU to promote Information exchange and cooperation on workplace health and safety. Therefore, despite the global spread of COVID-19 epidemic showed no signs of slowing down, both Parties were still actively planning bilateral exchanges and cooperation and organizing the Summit with the aim to enhance the safety efficiency and competitiveness of Taiwanese industries by adopting the UK practice and experience.

TW OSHA further pointed out that the UK is currently the country with the largest offshore wind installation capacity and the largest offshore wind farm worldwide. Therefore, the occupational safety and health supervision strategy and hazard prevention technology for the offshore wind farm was set as one of the major cooperation projects. For the past three-year period, Taiwan had successfully installed 22 offshore wind turbines with no severe occupational accidents. The Lost Time Injury Frequency (LTIF) per million hours worked was 0.235, which was far below the figure of 2.77 in the “G+ 2019 incident data report”. These facts indicate preliminary safety performance in accident prevention at the beginning. By signing the cooperation confirmation, TW OSHA & UK HSE would establish the substantial cooperation and communication channels for information exchange and consultations to facilitate the development of Taiwan offshore industry by sound policy and supervision, and make Taiwanese offshore wind farm OSH as one of the world’s finest role model.