Casualties Still High in Construction, Says John Lacey
As many as 53 people died in the construction sector last year, the latest HSE figure have revealed. This figure has raised some serious concern among the experts, especially John Lacey, Chairman of the IOSH Construction Group.
Lacey spoke about his concern of employers neglecting safety precautions in the construction sector. In this period of economic slowdown, construction of new buildings has virtually stopped and major work for construction companies has come in the form of refurbishment assignments. Lacey fears that employers have developed an attitude where they think that safety measures are not as important in refurbishment projects.
Although he acknowledged and appreciated the fact that the number of people dying on construction sites has come down, he said the figure is still far too high. Making his point about refurbishment jobs being dangerous to workers, he said there is a tendency of going fast in such projects and the employers are tempted to ignore basic safety measures, resulting in casualties. Apart from casualties, they also pose other health problems like musculoskeletal disorders to workers. Manual handling training enables your organisation to be compliant with the requirement to train persons involved in manual handling activities; click on manual handling courses for more info.
He also made his frustration known about the fact that accidents still happen because of the well-known reasons of workers falling from heights or something falling over a worker. Even after having complete knowledge about the causes of accidents and having the wherewithal to avert these, not much success had been achieved. He hoped that these anomalies would be rectified by the employers in the near future.
