Evaluation of occupational safety and health monitoring practices on building construction sites in Kampala

Abstract

The building construction sites have a lot of health and safety threats resulting from physical and manual site activities which make site workers vulnerable to work-related diseases, accidents, injuries and illnesses. Though laws and regulations are enacted, sites still experience high number of OSH incidents. This shows that sites do not follow strict health and safety practices which means limited or no monitoring work-related incidents thus no way forward to mitigate their causes which leads to continuous exposure of workers to occupational hazards. Thus, this implies such occupational fatalities, illnesses, injuries and diseases will continue to happen on the construction sites. This research represents the evaluation of occupational safety and health monitoring practices on building construction sites in Kampala. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data. It was composed of 26 questions responded by 38 respondents/sites. From the 38 questionnaires (sample size) distributed, returned and all were valid and usable. Descriptive statistical analysis was adopted for the study. Graphical representations and tables were used to represent the results. The research discovered that most respondents were aged between 31-40 years with degrees as most common education level attained and all were males. It revealed that many sites (71.1%) were not inspected by DOSH as workplaces, safety officers (55.5%) were not aware of the OSH act 2006, equipment and plants (81.6%) used were not inspected and approved to the standards, most of the sites are not registered for easy tracing and inspections as only 32% had done so, cuts and abrasions was at 42.1% followed by falls at 23.7% as leading injuries at sites. Fever and malaria were most common reportable diseases at 42% and 24% respectively. Sites (66%) did not carry corrective actions after reports and investigations on OSH incidents after only 10% sites “very often” perform investigations and audits as 42.1% never. This research suggested that department of health and safety should be equipped with more resources to carry out its tasks, stricter regulations as well as fines and charges set for defaulters, was found out that greater and higher number of the sites do not carry investigations, audits and also do not prepare the reports on the accidents/injuries/ diseases, the construction industry stakeholders should have an OSH shared platform as well as starting OSH degree courses at university level. Overall, this study shows that implementation of OSH monitoring practices on the construction sites can minimise OSH incidents in the industry as well as eradicating their recurring on the same sites.