After recent deaths, the quarry industry's national safety body wants to identify what it believes could be dozens of unregistered quarry operators in Otago-Southland.
The National Health and Safety Council for the mining and quarry sector recently said that about 500 quarry companies were registered throughout the country.
But there could be another 500 that were not registered.
Chris Baker, chairman of the mining-extractives sector council, MinEx, said there could be up to 50 unregistered quarries in Otago-Southland.
The industry wants the public's help to improve safety after four deaths in the quarry sector last year, including one in Southland, and other deaths in Waimate and North Canterbury.
Two of last year's quarry fatalities had occurred at small, unregistered sites, and such deaths were ultimately preventable and "completely unnecessary''.
"It absolutely needs to be taken seriously,'' Mr Baker said in an interview.
MinEx wanted to contact any unregistered quarry operators in Otago-Southland, and remind them of
liabilities and penalties imposed by the new Health and Safety at Work Act, which comes into force in April, Mr Baker said.
Worksafe NZ recently said by then all operators would be required to have a certificate of competence, which showed a quarry manager had undertaken relevant education and training and met requirements for safe supervision of a quarrying operation.
MinEx ideally wanted any smaller unregistered quarries to identify themselves so they could be helped to understand what was at stake, Mr Baker said. MinEx and WorkSafe had been working to identify all the smaller quarries around the country - but many were still off the radar.
"There is no room for complacency.
"Any death in the workplace is one death too many.''
