A Framework for Enhancing Occupational Safety and Health in Cement Manufacturing Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) as the science and art of the anticipating, recognizing, analysing and monitoring of hazards arising in the workplace that could harm the health and well-being of employees. Comparatively in the manufacturing industry, OSH is considered as an essential requirement to achieve expected production targets without any disturbances. Most of accidents, injuries and health diseases are created at working phase in the industry. This has been a significant issue in cement manufacturing industry because Sri Lankan cement manufacturing industry employs large number of employees where many OSH issues are presented due to complexity of the manufacturing process and due to many other reasons. Though the practice of this concept increases over world, very less number of researches have been conducted related to the OSH in the cement manufacturing industry in Sri Lanka. It has become a timely requirement to ensure the safety of the employees who are working in the cement manufacturing industry. Therefore, this study attempts to develop a framework for enhancing OSH in cement manufacturing industry in Sri Lanka. Initially, a comprehensive literature review was carried out to enlarge the existing knowledge on safety and health issues associated with the employees in the cement manufacturing industry and its effect on workers and society. In order to validate the research finding, semi-structured interviews were conducted among the three-different level of professionals including managerial level, supervisor level and labour level form each case. Collected data from the interviews was structured and analysed with the support of NVivo software. Empirical investigation addressed physical accidents, injuries and various kind of health diseases were the main issues in the cement industry. It was further identified that these issues are occurred by workplace hazards i.e. excessive cement dust, machines with moving parts, heavy vehicle movement etc. and other factors i.e. poor working relationship among workers, risky attitudes and behaviour of the workers etc. Although, plenty of activities have been taken placed to ensure OSH in workplace, some challenges including, fund allocation, ensuring the safety of contract employees, unrealistic production targets, ensuring the safety of customers and other outside parties and negligence of safe work instructions by employees were validated. Finally, a framework was developed based on the empirical research findings to enhancing the OSH in cement manufacturing industry in Sri Lanka