Mitigation of Accidents through Occupational Risk Assessment at Workplace: A Case Study in Lanka Sugar Company Private Limited, Pelwatte
Madhuranga, D.G.C.S., Wijayawardhane, W.H.S.R. and De Silva, N.
ABSTRACT
One of the most important aspects of any kind of business is occupational health and safety management. A healthy workforce contributes more to the success of a production. The sugar industry is one of the major risk-oriented, agro-based industry in Sri Lanka, though less concern on mitigation practices to minimize the risks of workplace. For this purpose, a questionnaire was prepared and gathered relevant data from workers as quantitative data. Qualitative data were collected from observations through the factory visit. All the observation-based risks and hazards identified were tabulated and the seriousness of risk was calculated, using the risk matrix tool. Using a risk matrix, appropriate mitigation methods were suggested and evaluated. Finally, it was evaluated the progress of mitigation methods by comparing the risk values at identification step and suggestion step. The ultimate objective of this research is to identify the workplace hazards frequently occurred in the Factory Department of Lanka Sugar Company Private Limited, Pelwatte and apply the risk assessment tool to the workplace to suggest appropriate mitigation measures, based on the risk assessment tool. The result of quantitative analysis showed that 54% of workers have lower levels of satisfaction about occupational health and safety conditions in the factory while 60% of them were not satisfied with the available occupational health and safety facilities. The research result showed that working conditions existed in the sugar mills were not at satisfactory level regarding employees’ occupational health and safety. Also in this research, it was clearly identified that workers were not very much keen on safety during their work. Although, 26.5% eye injuries were recorded, but still the welders without safety goggles commonly observed during the factory visit. Even though the company arranged safety awareness programs frequently in higher risk-oriented sections only 56% of the labours had sufficient awareness on occupational health and safety while others suggest the programs should be practical oriented. The study suggests that there should be practical awareness programs on occupational health and safety, sufficient supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) relevant to the job performance and it highly recommended that there must be continued inspections of job performance and usage of safety precautions, for higher employee performance.
KEYWORDS: Health and safety, Risk matrix tool, Risks and hazards