Abstract:
Construction industry is high-risky industry to the safety of employees. For that matter
health and safety regulations are introduced to safeguard employees’ health and safety
and to minimize risks and dangers as much as reasonably practicable. Having regulation
is not enough to safeguard health and safety of employees unless if employer and
employees complied with it because most accidents happened in construction sites is
caused by lack of taking proper safety measures. Federal public procurement agency
contract (PPA-2011) and Ethiopia labour proclamation 377/03 set minimum health and
safety requirements. There is high fatality and accident rate in sub-Saharan African
countries and particularly in Addis Ababa 20 construction related death accidents were
reported to AABOLSA within less than 3 months in 2019/2020. Hence, the objective of
this study was to assess contractual and legal occupational health and safety regulations
compliance on public building construction projects in Addis Ababa.
The study purposively took total fourteen (14) public building construction projects
constructed by grade one local contractor as a sample. The study applied descriptive
research method and the data for the study were collected using structured
questionnaires, interviews and observation. The data analyzed using Microsoft excel in
the form of Percent, averages and RII and the presentation of data is done in the tabular
form
Accordingly, the study revealed that nearly most (91%) contractor’s personnel have
positive awareness on benefits of complying with health and safety regulation and also
85% respondents know that contractors have an obligation of complying with health and
safety regulations. Around 50% of investigated sites comply half of the health and safety
regulation requirements adopted for the study. The study results also reveal that lack of
commitment of contractor’s management, lack of strict enforcement of regulation by
authority and less severe penalty for noncompliance or violations of regulations are
factors that affect contractors to compliance with Health & Safety regulations in case of
Addis Ababa public building construction projects.
To increase health and safety regulation compliance level the study recommends that
contractors’ management should show commitment to health and safety, regulatory
agency should have to inspect construction site safety and enforce the regulation
requirements, and also study recommends that there should be national standards to
audit health and safety compliance of building construction site.
