The attitude of workers in Malta towards occupational health and safety in the construction sector

Abstract

The aim of this study was to question and to interview workers in the Maltese construction industry to ascertain what their attitudes are to health and safety at work. As the graph and chart in Appendix 1 below shows the number of accidents in the past 3 years in the construction sector shows that is quite the same. Technology in recent years gives a wider range of how to safeguard one's own health and safety, still it is not being implemented, especially as the number of fatalities shows in this sector of industry. A sample of 22 companies was selected at random from internet websites and the Yellow Pages directory, included the self-employed, workers employed with small and big contractors, bosses of construction companies, and also foreign workers. The design of the questionnaire was to get a broader view and a more complete picture of the attitudes of the respondents towards occupational health and safety across the whole construction industry as possible. In practice, however, only eight respondents from two companies replied to the questionnaire, and whilst this narrows down the scalability of the results gained, the results have revealed many serious problems in the Maltese construction industry, including: i) the fact that construction companies in Malta have a blatant disregard for the safety of their workers; ii) the fact that many migrant workers work in the construction industry in Malta without understanding what is told to them, presenting many opportunities for accidents; iii) the fact that record-keeping is poor in construction companies in Malta; and iv) the fact that the OHSA, whilst it infers it controls health and safety in the construction industry blatantly does not, as one company responsible for a fatality. This work shows that it is extremely important for an urgent review of health and safety deliverance to be conducted across Maltese construction companies, and that a review of how health and safety training be begun, in terms of deciding which systems should be implemented and how these should be implemented, in terms of formal systems for risk assessments and health and safety training, for example.