Assessment of Occupational Safety and Health Management System in Some Federl Government Organizations
Creators: name: Zewedie, Takele
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2011

description: Background: Annually, throughout the world, an estimated 271 million people suffer from work related injuries, and 2 million die from the injury. In recent years, in developed countries the occupational health and safety of workers has improved but it is not true in developing countries. Ethiopia is categorized among under developed countries and do not have much data on health and safety. But assessment made by the Federal Civil Service Agency describes in 2000 E.C. that 14 males and 8 females died, 7 males and 8 females discharged from work due to disability and 6 males and 27 females' transfers to other jobs due to various work place. Objective: The objective of the study was to assess the Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) in fifty five Federal Government Organizations who higher Occupational Safety and Health experts. Methodology: An analytical research method was used to conduct the study in the selected organizations because facts or information are already available, and analyze these to a critical evaluation of the material. A total of 258 study subjects were randomly selected from fifty organizations according to their civil servants number proportions and fifty five Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) experts were directly selected from their respective organizations. The data was collected using the questionnaires A, and B. Questionnaire A was filled by OSH experts, questionnaire B filled by civil servants where as interviews were made with some officials in the former Federal Civil Service Agency and five Heads ,of Human Resource Managers of the surveyed organizations. Both questionnaire were pre-tested for their accuracy and validation prior to the actual study and the necessary adjustments were done accordingly. The data were entered after being encoded and analyzed using frequencies percentages. Results: The existence of Occupational hazards and disease are Physical (17.11%), Chemical(16.49%), Biological(22.92%), Ergonomic(24.58%) and Psychological(18.87%). On the other hand degree of effectiveness Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) in fifty five Federal Government The finding was that most of the experts described that Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) in the surveyed organizations did not effectively implement. The major challenges are lack of awareness of top and middle level managements and civil servants, insufficient or lack of budgetary support; failure to customizes OSHMS to organizational needs; weak management commitment; lack of integration with general management functions and systems and restricting OSH functions to OSH experts Findings/Results The response of most civil servants also shows that they are not aware about the practice or implementation of Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) in their organizations . They described work injuries occurred in the past 12 months were broken bones /fracture 10%, concussion/ internal injuries14.78%, burns/scalds5.21%, eye injury/ eye strain22.17%, asphyxia /lack of oxygen18.69%, sprain, strain, dislocation6.08%, electric shock5.65%, acute poisoning exposure to toxic8.26% and others 9.13%. Out of total respondents 10(3.90%) receive, 223(87.10%) did not receive medical treatment while 23(8.98%) cannot say any. Absentees from work in the same period was 12(8.00%) less than 2, 23(15.33%) 2-4, 11(7.33%) 4- 6,40(26.66%) 6-8, 39(26.00%) 25 and (16.66%) greater than 10 days. The result of interviews with Heads, of Human Resource Management also indicates that the application of Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) with general management practice was not employed in their organizations. Conclusions and recommendations: Some occupational hazards were indentified in the surveyed organizations. Besides effective Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) is not in place in the surveyed organizations as conclusion. Recommendations were implementation of occupational safety and health according to proclamation No 515/2006 Article 47-56. In addition to this commitment of management to a successful OSHMS in the work place, allocate sufficient resources (financial and human) for the proper functioning of occupational safety and health program