Title: A study on occupational health hazards among construction workers in India

Authors: Ravi Kumar Gupta

Addresses: Department of Humanities and Management Science, Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract: Construction work is one of the most hazardous works across the globe. The workers involved in the construction industry are being underpaid and extremely vulnerable to the occupational health hazard and absence of social security mechanism. The construction workers' probabilities of exposure to risks of a workplace accident are high. The workers are exposed to a host of hazardous substances, which has the potential to cause serious health and occupational diseases. They are being exploited in the terms of low wage, non-availability of social security, work with low payment and sexual harassment at workplace. The paper examines the present health status of the construction workers in the Gorakhpur City of Uttar Pradesh, India. Primarily, it examines details of accidents in past five years, reasons of workplace accidents, illness/injury and treatment, man-days and income lost due to illness and hospitalisation. The result shows that the workers are extremely vulnerable to occupation health hazards.

Keywords: construction workers; occupational health hazards; safety; India; informal sector; workplace accidents; illness; injury; treatment; low payment; sexual harassment; workplace; man-days; income; occupational diseases.

DOI: 10.1504/IJENM.2021.119663

International Journal of Enterprise Network Management, 2021 Vol.12 No.4, pp.325 - 339

Received: 23 Jul 2019
Accepted: 28 Feb 2020
Published online: 14 Dec 2021 *

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