Cranes Today Magazine letter; is safety affordable??
Letter: Is safety affordable?
June 2007
I do crane inspection, here in Jordan, alongside my main line, crane hire. I was appointed as a crane inspector for CCC while I was working for them in the Gulf Area. That was in 1978 after I was sent for intensive crane training to the USA for 3 months with major crane manufacturers.
Jordan is a small and poor country. The biggest crane available here is a 400 ton Gottwald type MK600. There are no regulations from the government to organise cranes certification and there are no laws to test and certification periodically. So it comes to the foreign contractors that come here to do different projects who demand cranes certification.
The problem here is that there is no government legislation that would authorise people like myself to do crane certification. I had joined LEEA for some time so as to get such authorisation,but I had to leave due to the high fees. I am really here look for support from you, from the various certification bodies like LEEA and SC&RA. When there is a conference about safety, maybe somebody would think to invite we poor people.
In the interview with Ray Anthony (Cranes Today April p35), he talks about how difficult it is to solve problems with the modern computers mounted on cranes. I just thought of operators in Jordan: God help us here. If rental fleets the USA still face difficulty with computers,then what can we do here where we do not have the proper technicians for such a job?
Yousef Mousa, Yousef Mousa Crane Hire, Amman,JordanWe contacted Derrick Bailes, chief executive of the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association, who said that annual fees are currently about £880 ($1,750) per year, which even in a poor country is not a lot for its services, and that unfortunately it cannot make the concessions that Mousa asks for.Derrick Bailes, chief executive, LEEA
