Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) in construction: barriers and improving efforts

Optimal Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) implementation to achieve zero accident becomes the demand for construction service providers in realizing a qualified infrastructure, including for construction industry in Bali and Indonesia as general. Goverment Law related to OHS state that every worker has the right to get protection for Occupational Safety and Health. However, it is frequently seen that eventhough the contractor state implementing OHS and placing OHS flag in their project location, we still find the labours working without Personal protective Equipment (PPE). This study explored the barriers of OHS implementation faced by contractors in Bali, and to formulate the efforts to improve it's implementation. Collected data from a questionnaire survey were analysed using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the priority level of the identified barriers. The results suggested that the barriers on the implementation of OHS which was sorted from the most important included Limited funding for OHS (3.231), Low safety OHS priority by company management (2.020), Low culture and discipline to implement OHS (1.031), Lack of knowledge about OHS (0.725), Weak supervision (0.478), Weak application of sanctions from the company (0.340), and Contractor forced to work until late at night (0.230). The related efforts were formulated based on semi-structured interviews recommended that the cost of implementing OHS including the required methods and equipment should be covered in the planning stage, and socialization, supervision and strict sanctions against violations of OHS implementation needs to be applied.