Occupational Accidents: A Perspective of Pakistan Construction Industry

It has been observed that the construction industry is one of the notorious industry having higher rate of fatilities and injuries. Resulting in higher financial losses and work hour losses, which are normally faced by this industry due to occuaptional accidents. Construction industry has the highest occupational accidents rate recorded throughout the world after agriculture industry. The construction work site is often a busy place having an incredibly high account of activities taking place, where everyone is moving in frenzy having particular task assigned. In such an environment, occupational accidents do occur. This paper gives information about different types of occupational accidents & their causes in the construction industry of Pakistan. A survey has been carried out to identify the types of occupational accidents often occur at construction site. The impact of each occupational accident has also been identified. The input from the different stakeholders invloved on the work site was analyzed using RIW (Relative Importance Weight) method. The findings of this research show that ?fall from elevation, electrocution from building power and snake bite? are the frequent occupational accidents occur within the work site where as ?fall from elevation, struck by, snake bite and electrocution from faulty tool? are the occupational accident with high impact within the construction industry of Pakistan. The results also shows the final ranking of the accidents based on higher frequency and higher impact. Poor Management, Human Element and Poor Site Condition are found as the root causes leading to such occupational accidents. Hence, this paper identifies that what type of occupational accidents occur at the workplace in construction industry of Pakistan, in order to develop the corrective actions which should be adequate enough to prevent the re-occurrence of such accidents at work site.