What is Safety lacuna in Indian scenario?

GUIDELINES FOR SAFETY PRACTICES

In paramount of growing concerns regarding safety in Industry there are some guidelines that are set up to be followed at construction sites for increasing safety standards.

3.1. Management Leadership:

The highest authorities of the company need to provide leadership, vision and resources for effective health and safety programmes. They need to make it worker safety and health core value of their organization. They should visibly communicate their safety and health commitment of continuously improving standard to workers. They are ought to lead by examples through their own actions.

3.2. Worker Participation:

The effectiveness of safety program depends on the proper participation of workers. Successful programmes educate the workers of the potential hazards that are associated to their job. For any effective programme the workers should have access to important details of the programme and feel comfortable to give in their inputs. 

3.3. Hazard Identification and Assessment:

Hazard identification and assessment is very important in any safety and health program. This is due to the fact that unanticipated hazards can arise due to various factors. The failure to identify these hazards is one of the primary causes for construction injuries and illness. The responsibility of the workers and employees is to collect and review data related to hazards on the site. They also need to conduct regular inspections of job sites to keep track of occurrence of hazards. They should also look into various dangerous consequences and group them together and identify the trend in their occurrence. For every hazard the severity and the likelihood needs to be found out to determine it’s risk factor.

3.4. Hazard Prevention and Control:

Effective controls protect workers from hazards; help avoid injuries, illnesses, and incidents; minimize or eliminate safety and health risks. The employers are responsible for developing a hazard control plan to determine the implementation of controls. There should be a hierarchy of orders developed by employer for identifying and controlling hazards. They also need to develop plans to protect workers during emergencies and non-routine times. 

They need to continuously monitor the effectiveness of existing controls and determines if new method are required. Continuously review new technologies for cost effectiveness and better productivity.

3.5. Education and Training:

This is an important part of health and safety programme as it gives employers and workers greater understanding of the programme and help them contribute to it’s development and implementation. They also help them be updated with knowledge about hazards and controls as it helps them becomes more productive and work safely.

3.6. Program Evaluation and Improvement:

The continuous evaluation of health and safety programme is required to verify their implementation and later on its effectiveness. Whenever the results of these evaluation identify areas to improve the programme , the concerned authorities should implement the changes and monitor the effectiveness of the change.

3.7. Communication and Coordination for Employers On Multiemployer Worksites:

Generally in construction industry, contractor hires various sub-contractors who have different workers working at various projects. Therefore it is important that all the various section of workers coordinate and work and their safety is preserved.

Safety lacuna in Indian scenario:-

These are the Safety lacuna in Indian scenario are categorized below-

WHY ARE THESE GUIDELINES NOT FOLLOWED IN INDIA

The Indian Construction Industry is comprised of huge number of companies which fall into different brackets of expertise. It is observed that the above guidelines are usually only followed by the top-tier companies and its implementation is hardly observed in the low tier firms. Even in the top tier companies the full implementation of these guidelines is not observed at all their sites. This implementation of guidelines in the industry is not seen because of the following reasons

1. Cost of Implementation:

This is one of the biggest factors that the implementation is not observed in India. The low-tier companies cannot afford the cost of hiring professionals for safety implementation and monitoring. They don’t have enough capital to afford personal protective equipment for their workers. Safety is less of a priority in budget allocation for projects. This is similar case in almost all companies in India. 

2. Worker Negligence:

The workers come from different background and are not well-educated regarding safety. They don’t understand the risk to their lives due to lack of safety practices. Even after being educated about the risk, they don’t tend to follow the practices. They find it a hindrance to their work. Only after experiencing the fatality of such conduct they understand it’s value which sometimes can be too late. 

3. Lack of Implementation of Legislation:

There are different laws set up by the government for the safety standards, but the implementation isn’t monitored completely. Corruption at different levels of the implementation has made it easy for defaulters to get away with it. The workers are not aware of their rights and methods to fight for infringement of their rights. 

4. Engineer Negligence:

The different engineers working on sites don’t take safety seriously and don’t take proper efforts for the following of the safety plan of the site. They are not strict with sub-contractor and workers who do not follow proper safety norms.