ASSESSMENT ON HEALTH AND SAFETY PRACTICES IN ETHIOPIA ELECTRIC POWER CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

Abstract

The construction business has long been regarded as one of the most dangerous. This is due to the industry's low performance in terms of health and safety when compared to other industries around the world. Every country's labor law states that it is the employer's responsibility to ensure that every employee is working in a satisfactory, safe, and healthy environment. The construction industry in Ethiopia is characterized by high incidents rate of accidents. The objective of this research is Assessment of Health and Safety Practices in Ethiopian Electric Power Construction Projects. Accordingly, survey research design was used to accomplish the objectives of the study Mainly a five point Likert scale questionnaire was distributed to engineers and professionals who are working in Ethiopian Electric Power construction projects as a project manager, site engineer and office engineer to may help collect the data for knowing the levels of health and safety conditions in Ethiopian Electric Power Construction Projects Activities used SPSS (Statically Package For Social Science) software, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets tools, and descriptive statics were used to identify the importance and relative significance of the health and safety factors that were ultimately utilized to develop the proposed health and safety framework or health and safety model. The results show that the health and safety practices in Ethiopian Electric Power Construction Projects are classified as unsafe practice and required high improvement that is due to a major five causes factors of accidents on the response failure to use Personal Protective Equipment’s (PPE),Lack of health and safety training, lack of top management commitment in health and safety programs,, Lack of education, Negligence & carelessness, Inadequate management of work environment, and ineffectiveness of current health and safety policies. And Most of construction projects don’t have continues health and safety training, safety meeting, safety policies, safety officer, medical and first aid facilities and reporting system. Moreover, the roles of government towards health and safety are almost minimal under implementation of Occupational Health and Safety rules.