Rural safety cannot be ignored; villagers need to raise their awareness of precautions

Not long ago, I went to the countryside to run errands and stopped for a while at a fellow villager's home. The villager's family was building a house, and a young man was using a homemade hoist to lift cement up to the second floor. Suddenly the hoist flung the young man out of the second-floor window, resulting in fractured ribs. Only later did we learn that the cause was the homemade hoist failing to meet safety regulations and the young man's improper operation.

This reminded me of something that happened last year. Last autumn, I went to the hospital to visit a friend. A fellow villager in the same ward said in pain: “When working in the countryside, you must never be careless. One night a few days ago, it suddenly began to rain heavily, and he hurried up to the roof of the second floor to bring in the dried soybeans and corn. It was dark at the time, and the rain was especially heavy, so I accidentally missed my footing and fell from the second floor, fracturing my left leg.”

From this it can be seen that safety work plays a very important role in the countryside.

In recent years, the living conditions of farmers in our country have gradually improved, and the building of a new countryside has brought gratifying changes. But at the same time, some new situations and new problems have also emerged in terms of safety. For example, many farmers carry out large-scale construction in order to give the old place a new look. But during construction, due to a lack of safety knowledge about ground-breaking and electrical work and of operating skills for special equipment, accidents occur from time to time. Some farmers have also bought advanced agricultural machinery and tools or motor vehicles. But during use, due to unskilled operation or operation in violation of regulations and other reasons, various accidents have occurred; some equipment is valued only for use, with no attention paid to daily maintenance, planting the seeds of hidden dangers. Some farmers also have weak safety awareness and incomplete safety facilities. For example, frequently used rooftops have no guardrails high enough, outdoor stairs have no handrails, and adults and children often suffer fall injuries; in excavated road sections or dangerous areas (gullies, reservoirs, ponds), no conspicuous safety signs are set up; some building materials and debris occupy roads and safety passages, and fire-fighting facilities and equipment are incomplete, and so on. These phenomena exist to varying degrees in the countryside, and with the slightest carelessness, accidents will occur, causing great suffering to families.

Safety is an important part of building a new countryside, and it is also the premise and guarantee for rural production and life. It affects the harmony and stability of thousands of households. Therefore, when building a new countryside, rural grassroots organizations should put safety in a more prominent position and do everything possible to safeguard rural safety.

First, a safety work leading group should be established. It should regularly study rural safety issues, such as the “eight preventions” in summer (preventing electric shock, preventing lightning strikes, preventing floods and flood control, preventing drowning, preventing fire and explosions, preventing traffic accidents, preventing heatstroke, and preventing food poisoning), and fire prevention and gas poisoning prevention in winter; it should persistently carry out hidden danger inspection activities, going door to door to check hidden dangers, correct violations, immediately rectify any hidden dangers found, stop violations on the spot, and eliminate accidents in the bud. At the same time, some voluntary safety officers should be appointed. Nowadays there are many elderly, weak, sick, and disabled people in the countryside, and rural voluntary safety officers can regularly patrol and remind villagers about their safety situation, and take turns standing guard and on duty at key positions and dangerous areas to ensure there are no mistakes.

Second, the assessment mechanism for rural cadres should be improved. The work of rural grassroots cadres involves a multitude of tasks, but they must make overall plans and reasonable arrangements. They should grasp safety just as they grasp the economy, family planning, and stability; they should attach importance to rural safety just as they attach importance to coal mine safety, and not let safety become a dead corner. At the same time, a safety production responsibility system should be implemented, assessment methods should be improved, and assessment efforts should be increased to ensure the peace of the locality.

⟦NL> Third, safety education should be strengthened. Most people in the countryside have a low level of education and weak safety awareness. Some villagers are superstitious, believing that if an accident happens, it is their own bad luck, poor fortune, or bad feng shui at home, rather than believing in science and examining their own reasons. Therefore, rural grassroots organizations should organize villagers in a planned way to study laws and regulations and rules and systems related to safety, such as regulations on ground-breaking and electrical work management, regulations on safe electricity use management, fire management regulations, and road traffic safety regulations. In the slack farming season, villagers can be organized to receive operational skills training for commonly used agricultural machinery and equipment, motorized equipment, and special equipment, and targeted safety drills can be carried out to improve villagers' safety skills.

Fourth, higher-level authorities should provide more support and help. The safety foundation in the countryside is relatively weak, so higher-level authorities should increase investment in funds and policies, carry out key “poverty alleviation” for rural safety, improve incomplete facilities, and lengthen the “weak links” in rural safety. For some accident “frequent areas” and “severely affected areas,” they should help grassroots cadres clarify their thinking, formulate specific rectification plans and rectification measures, and give the people back a safe and healthy homeland. Safety promotion activities should be carried out, technicians should be invited to the countryside to conduct various forms of popular education on common safety knowledge, and safety knowledge should be delivered to thousands of households, continuously raising the masses' safety awareness. In this way, a good atmosphere in which everyone talks about safety and everyone wants safety can be formed in the countryside, and tragedies will not repeat themselves.