Assessment of contractual and legal occupational health & safety regulations compliance on public building construction projects in Addis Ababa

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.