Practices and Challenges of occupational health and safety standard implementation in building construction projects in Addis Ababa
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2020-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Occupational health and safety practices are designed to handle accidents and illnesses
that occurred during work and due to the effects of work. To manage the issue
International, regional and national organizations have developed standards, directives
and guidelines. Construction is one of the highest occupational illnesses causing sector
that result in several fatal and nonfatal accidents. The objective of this paper is to assess
practices and challenges of the implementation level of occupational health and safety
standard intended for construction sector in selected building construction firms found in
Addis Ababa. In presentation of results descriptive approach is followed based on
quantitative and qualitative analysis of data collected from twenty one randomly selected
grade one construction firms. From the willing firms’ persons having direct involvement
in the area including safety and health officers, project managers and other staffs are
identified and administered with the questionnaire. The data is collected through
questionnaire inquiring the awareness, practices and challenges of occupational health
and safety standard implementation. The collected data is analyzed using SPSS statistics
tool. The study showed that only nearly half of the participating firms know about the
availability of the standard and many of them are not using it. In the other hand the
requirements stated in the standard and in other literatures are not well placed and not
practiced properly. Integration of occupational health and safety in business activities, of
lack of budget, absence of planning and identification of hazards and participation of
workers in this activities are major findings of the study. It is also observed that nearly
half of the participating firms do not have a function that handles occupational health
and safety issues. The major challenge raised from the participating firms is lack of
management commitment in implementing the requirements and practices in construction
sites. As a recommendation the firms should use the standard and apply the requirements
and other practices to save the life of their workers and the resource wasted in relation to
accidents. Finally this paper provides a highlight on occupational status of participating
firms which will be used as an input for further detail study on the overall status of the
firms with this respect.
Description
Keywords
occupational health and safety, construction, standards, accidents,, challenges, practices