OSH YOUTH WEB SITE A GREAT HIT

The Occupational Safety and Health Service of the Department of Labour 's (OSH) new youth web site has proved a run-away success, Enterprise and Commerce Minister Max Bradford says.

Launched by Mr Bradford during OSH's very successful WorkSafe Week, 5-9 October, the youth site attracted more 14,000 hits on its first working day of operation.

Mr Bradford said that since then demand has been steady with the profile of users showing many coming from providers which service secondary schools - one of the site's main target markets.

OSH has also recorded 5000 page requests from the youth site in a single day. This is almost ten times that number of requests OSH usually receives for its main web site.

"The success of the youth web site clearly shows there is the demand for the information and the know-how to find it on the Internet," Mr Bradford said.

"Today's young people are being brought up in the computer age - for many of them surfing the "net" is as everyday an activity as turning the page was in my day.

"For OSH to extend its reach to youth, the adoption of this information technology was a logical move. I'm also pleased that as a spin off from the success of the youth site, there's increased usage of the main OSH web site."

Mr Bradford said he was interested to hear the positive feedback on the new OSH youth site, particularly given some of the gruesome workplace accident images.

"OSH makes no excuses for some of the horror images," Mr Bradford said. "It is reality, just as the fact that too many New Zealanders are injured or, more tragically, die on the job is a reality."