The Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) has launched a poster competition for children to promote farm safety following a number of recent incidents on farms involving children.
HSENI said that its ‘Be Aware Kids – Child Safety on Farms’ campaign had led to a significant reduction in such incidents. However, it warned against complacency among families with young children.
“Unfortunately this year due to the unprecedented circumstances of Covid-19, our staff will not have the opportunity to visit rural primary schools in the run-up to the summer holidays to deliver our farm safety messages,” a spokesman said.
However, we still wish to promote our farm safety poster competition which we have been running successfully now for a number of years, as we feel this is an excellent way of getting our important safety messages out to farming families.
“We are inviting primary school pupils [Foundation, Key Stage 1 & Key Stage 2] and pupils from special schools throughout Northern Ireland to enter our poster competition which will commence on June 1, 2020, and run for 12 weeks.”
To enter children should draw or paint a picture based on the key dangers on the farm from one of the following four categories:
- Dangers from slurry;
- Dangers from farm animals;
- Dangers from tractors and other farm machinery;
- Dangers from falls and falling objects.
“Each week we will invite entries from one of the above categories. The theme for each week will be announced every Monday on HSENI’s Facebook page.”
HSENI principal inspector Camilla Mackey said: “In previous years, HSENI has produced a calendar made up of the winning entries to the competition, and the calendar has been distributed to over 42,000 rural homes throughout Northern Ireland.
“HSENI hopes, if possible, to produce a calendar for 2021 from the winning entries to this year’s competition.
“We look forward to receiving some wonderful artwork highlighting the very important child safety on farms messages and truly appreciate your help with the promotion of the competition.”
