Smart communication with migrant workers

Application that provides 300 sentences about daily lives, safety and health in 10 languages

14^th September

case1

A Korean worker talked to his migrant colleague from China aged 29 to arrange massed tools, but he failed to understand and just smiled at his eyes. That smile triggered misunderstanding between the two persons finally leading to assault.

case2

A migrant worker from Bangladesh was injured in his hands as he tried to eradicate materials crushed in the processing machine without stopping the running equipment at a work place located in Gwang-ju, Gyung-gi province January 2012.

KOSHA has developing application for smart phones to help communicate with migrant workers at work places.

President Hun-ki Baek of KOSHA exhibited the multi-lingual application named “escaping crisis”, which was developed to help prevent occupational accidents of migrant workers and facilitate communication with them.

This application is served in languages used in 10 nations: Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

When the user selects one of the Korean sentences stored and nationality among 10 nations, the sentence translated is pronounced in the language selected.

For instance, if the manager wants to say ‘please put back the thing you used’ which is one of the sentences listed on the application to a migrant worker, he can choose the language he wants, and then the application speaks the sentence in the language he selected.

Migrant workers can also use this application vice-versa as the application translates and says selected sentences written in their languages into Korean sentences.

The sentences stored in the application have 6 categories: sentences for daily lives, families and identity; work-related sentences to give orders; sentences on safety signs; work life including vacation and pay-check; health; protective equipment. There are 20-90 sentences by each category totaling 300 sentences.

There is ‘favorite’ feature in the application so that users set aside frequently used sentences. Another strengths of this application is the service provided off-line that allow users enjoy the content while business trip or in the place where they do not have the internet access.

Users of the Android phones can download the application from the Play store while i-phone users can get it from App-store from the end of September.

KOSHA plans to add 700 more sentences next year reflecting opinions from work places hiring migrant workers. Further, 3 more languages would be served by 2014 adding to the existing 10 languages.

According to the statistics targeting 300 migrant workers conducted by KOSHA, 58.1% saw the miscommunication as the biggest obstacle when they work in Korea. Meanwhile, another survey targeting 125 business owners shows that more than half of them (58.1%) are in desperate of communication with their migrant workers.

*Problems of working in Korea for migrant workers:                         
miscommunication (58.1%), hubba-hubba culture(41.9%)

*The most needed one in preventing migrant workers’ accidents:             
communication (58.1%), continuing training (41.9%)

A person from KOSHA said “As the application spreads, it would contribute a lot to resolving problems of migrant workers as well as reducing occupational accidents by lowering the barrier in communicating with each other.

Pictures of the application ‘escaping crises’



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