Noise Control Awards

To give further impetus to noise control efforts at the plant level, the Ministry introduced a Noise Control Awards (NCA) scheme in 1999. The awards comprised three categories:

Excellence Award: for companies that have made outstanding achievements in noise control at the workplace. To qualify for this award, the noise level in the entire premises must be below 85 dBA, the noise reduction (NR) should be at least 6 dBA per source, and the total NR should be at least 10 dBA.

Merit Award: for companies that have made significant achievements in noise control at the workplace. The criteria are similar to that of the Excellence Award except that the noise level in the premises must be below 90 dBA, and there must be an effective hearing conservation programme implemented.

Innovation Award: introduced in 2003 to encourage companies to apply creative or innovative ideas, methods or techniques to control noise.

Over the years, the biennial awards scheme received increasing support, with a total of 29 companies receiving recognition for their efforts in controlling noise – seven in 1999, 10 in 2001 and 12 in 2003. Following the success of the NCA, the scheme has been incorporated into a wider recognition system - the Occupational Health Best Practices (OHBP) Award The inaugural OHBP Awards presented in October 2004, featured both Noise and Chemical Control categories, and saw 15 companies winning in the Noise Control category. The objective of the new scheme is to encourage companies to address not only noise, but other health hazards as well, and an Ergonomics Solutions category will be included from 2005.