In mid-September, two workers fell to their death while working on a lift installation at a construction site. Earlier, seven workers were killed when a scaffolding fell at a construction site in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The Gurugram Police released a report that at least 20 construction workers in the city have lost their lives in the city till July this year. Similar accidents have been reported from Chennai as well. The common thread in all these is the lack of safety measures that might have prevented these needless accidents.
A global study in 2015 found that the Indian construction workforce constitutes 7.5 percent of the global workforce, but accounts for 16.5 percent of the fatal global occupational accidents. It also found that about 40 percent of the fatalities were due to falls, over 8 percent were struck by objects, and about 8.5 percent by electrocution. Clearly, a little precaution could have reduced the fatalities.
Subsequently, safety became a very important chapter of the National Building Code (NBC). NBC Vice Chairman V Suresh told this author that the NBC 2016 provisions were built around structural, health, fire, construction, public, and life safety. The NBC has a very comprehensive coverage in Part 2 (Administration on Regulatory Responsibilities), and Part 7 (Construction Management Practices and Safety ...for Construction and Demolition).
Why then do construction sites in India remain one of the riskiest in the world?
Construction activities have grown by 80 percent in the past four years; from Rs 7.8 crore in 2013 to Rs 14,000 crore in 2022. With an accident rate of 165 out of every 1,000 workers in India injured, it is important to address this issue urgently.
Large companies are increasingly more or less compliant. Companies such as Hiranandani, L&T, Tata Projects, Gammon India, Hindustan Construction, Simplex, and Shapoorji Pallonji, are all Integrated Management System (IMS) certified. All workers have to wear all personal protective equipment (PPE), such as helmet, shoes, body harness, etc. They follow safety issues, and construction worker concerns force organisations to train them for safety, and quality control issues.
This also comes with the mandate of enforcement staff, a cost that is not factored into small and medium projects. As a result, the cost of compliance becomes very expensive for smaller companies. The supervisory staff to ensure safety have to remain vigilant, and maintain logistics records, on the fly. While a good reputation is a plus for large clients, for small and medium developers, it is a wasteful and an impractical effort, when the deciding factor is cost.
Residential construction accounts for over 55 percent of India’s construction profile. A very large part of this is un-engineered or is supervised by masons-turned-contractors. They rely on unskilled migrant labour that moves from job to job. Per-day productivity is the criterion of selection here, and the harness actually reduces their productivity. Also, when they leave one site and go to the next, there is no authority that inspects security on work sites. So workers themselves don't often opt for safety equipment.
The NBC has laid down safety in excavation, with the right level of supervision in all elements of foundation construction. All safety provisions for construction processes, and the right physical barriers at construction sites: scaffolding and underpinning, safety of construction workers with PPE, and work area protection, as well as health and hygiene factors and facilities for construction workers are clearly spelt out. The special requirements for foundation and basement construction with right encasement protection from landslide, etc. are covered. Working at heights with inclement weather for high winds and rainfall, and slippery work front, safe operation of construction equipment, and machineries, have also been covered.
However, these are precisely the roles where accidents occur.
Many building by-laws have incorporated the provisions of the NBC, which are guidance documents in local building rules and development control rules. But the local authorities under whose jurisdiction the enforcement falls, are under-staffed, with construction worker-safety not on high priority. That said, there are some cases of enforcement. After an accident in Porur in Chennai in 2014, all those responsible for the project were arrested for criminal negligence.
But these are few and far between. Most site owners pay the families of injured/deceased workers a compensation to settle the problem. The rural migrant families are not aware of their rights nor are they powerful enough to fight the system. State governments offer compensation to the families too. But there are few efforts at ongoing supervision and training to ensure that these fatalities are reduced. With migrant manpower freely available, and municipal governance in construction sites still at a nascent stage, things have not hit a critical level for the industry yet. Till then, worker safety will remain an afterthought in majority of India’s construction sites.
E Jayashree Kurup is Director, Real Estate & Cities, Wordmeister Editorial Services LLP. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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