Study on the current conditions of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) for Bangladeshi Ready-Made Garments (RMG) workers

摘要

This study aimed to present an overview of the situation of different types of occupational health hazards and safety threats in garment industries of Bangladesh to achieve information related to employer physical condition, health facilities, accident indicators, occupational health and safety and safety activities. A structured questionnaire (comprising check-box questions and open-ended questions) was developed to collect data about participants’ socio-demographic characteristics and other different OHS matters. The sample consisted of 100 workers taking randomly from two small-sized garment factories. Four problem areas (health, environment, task & management and OHS & ergonomics) were generated to categorize different types of problems. The results showed that back pain (27%) was the most threatening among the health related problems while dust (36%), machine hazard (33%) and lack of hazard analysis (48%) were most threatening among environment, task & management and OHS & ergonomics related problems respectively. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was performed to check whether the problem areas and the problems of both the companies were same. The test result showed no significant difference in problem areas and problems between two companies, which meant the data, were relevant. The study also presented some recommendations about how the present condition can be improved.