Just a few short months ago, in May, two construction workers were killed due to unsafe working conditions at a site in Navi Mumbai, a suburb of sorts to the Sai Mannat business hub in India.
While the deaths should have prompted outrage and collective demand for improving safety conditions, that’s just not the way things work in India. Reporting for NDTV, Sonal Matharu and Sreenivasan Jain shared the following:
We filmed inside the Sai Mannat site using a hidden camera – as well as a regular camera from the outside – to find workers suspended several stories above ground without safety nets or belts. We could see open wires, posing the risk of electrocution.
A metallic plank, the same one which caused the fatal accident in May, could be seen sliding down the building, tilted, with three workers on it without helmets.These findings shed light on the darker side of India’s $140 billion construction industry, where a pervasive lack of safety, as well as lack of government oversight places millions of workers at grave risk.
The Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, which governs safety at worskites, sets out nearly 200 rules, including asking employers to ensure that workers are supplied with helmets, boots, harnesses and other safety equipment. Risky open spaces are meant to be covered, with netting, for instance. Exposed wiring in wet areas is another no-no under the law.
If you have ever witnessed the construction of larger projects in India, then you probably already know just how deplorable safety conditions are, compared to what we enjoy in the US. I personally have seen pictures of job sites for Fortune 50 companies building large commercial office buildings with workers scampering across bamboo “scaffolding” barefoot, with no personal protective equipment whatsoever.
So yeah, those toolbox talks take time, and wearing fall protection and PPE does slow you down. But those tactics may also save your life so you can still get home to see your family tonight.
AEC Forensics 