An occupational ergonomics in the Indonesian state mandatory sustainable forest management instrument: A review

Designed as a biodiversity-maintenance concept, Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) considers not only forest for its ecological function, but also forestry workers whom play a significant role in executing the SFM program in the implementation stage. By using occupational ergonomics approach, this paper aims to examine how the Indonesian mandatory SFM certification, the so-called Pengelolaan Hutan Produksi Lestari (PHPL) positioned forestry workers in its SFM scheme. This issue is important since forestry work is a well-known profession with high occupational safety and health (OSH) risk. Content analysis on occupational ergonomics-related national policies and the mandatory PHPL Criteria and Indicators (C&I), and interviews with forest managers, PHPL auditor, and forestry workers indicate the poor performance of the instrument to assess the occupational-ergonomics-related factors at a practical level. This study reveals that PHPL is more of administrative liability obligation fulfillments rather than performance-based fulfillments (meanwhile, OSH status should be seen as an outcome of a good safety culture rather than an artifact/document). This study verifies content-overlap among the verifiers, content mismatch between the verifiers and the actual characteristic of forest operation, and the absence of distinct assessment standard. This study also discovers the existence of “ergonomics holes” in the PHPL C&I: (1) promoting a safe working environment for forestry workers, (2) distinct organization structural linkage on safety responsibility assignments, (3) emergency procedure, (4) distinct qualification for heavy machine operator and chemical technician, (5) sub-contract workers, and (6) the importance of management commitment and workers' participation. Revision on PHPL should seriously consider integrating OSH and well-being aspect as mentioned in Indonesia's national policies concerning manpower and occupational safety.