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Health and Safety Problem in Construction

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Health and Safety Problem in Construction
Introduction
The performance of construction industry has improved in recent years but unfortunately the death rates and the serious injury rates in construction is highest among all industries. Every year thousands of workers are killed or get injured while working in the construction industry due to several health and safety issues. One of the common health and safety problems in construction is accidents and deaths due to falling from roofs. According to Health and Safety Guidance (HSG 33, 1998), roof work is very dangerous and one out of five deaths in
Construction is due to falling from or through roofs. If workers don't die than they suffer from serious injuries resulting in permanent disabilities. These accidents not only take place in big scale construction projects abut also in simple repair works. The Health and Safety in Employment Act (1992) of New Zealand focuses on preventing people from all kinds of harm while they are at work.The purpose of this paper is to identify the causes of accidents and ill heath in roof work activities and to explain how these hazards can be controlled so that no workers get injured or die while working on or near to roofs.
Analysis
Working on roofs is very risky because workers have to work at the height. Surprisingly 24% of the workers who are killed during construction are the roofers who fall while working at roofs on heights (Thomas, Holden and Maitra, 2008). A large number of

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