CONSTRUCTION HEALTH AND SAFETY LEGISLATION, COMPARING ETHIOPIA AND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Abstract

Construction industry has various risks due to the activities, individuals and many companies in different scales that it contains. Besides, construction materials, machinery, tools, tasks and handling skills all come with their own risks. Therefore, construction industry is prone to many potential hazard and accident. Accidents can be avoided mostly by implementing health and safety laws and regulations by ensuring those protocols are continuously maintained. In this study, Ethiopian construction health and safety legislation are discussed and suggestions for amendments are recommended. As different researches show that the Ethiopia construction industry has a safety problem moreover, the safety legislations are not being enforced in careful way. Therefore, in order to minimize the problem observed, it is recommended to amend and modify current legislation and control strategies with different ways of enforcement in construction industry to more rigorous legislation and control practices to enhance construction safety level in Ethiopia. Moreover, for making a better legislation and for recommending on how to amend the current legislation, comparison is made with comparative study by document review. The comparison is between American and Federal Democratic Republic Ethiopia (FDRE) construction OHS legislations and laws from the point of view of thirteen topics, the two countries have different legislative systems and implementation method, and which are from different continents, but America has strong economy and strong construction industry better than Ethiopia. There is no hesitation that the America is one of the world’s leaders in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) issue. As the comparison shows their exist key difference across the Legislations, from those the American Act states employer and employee’s right and responsibility in detail and obligate the employer to make the workers aware of their right under the Act but Ethiopian neither include any rights of workers nor obligate employers to aware workers right. Moreover, Best practice and lessons from American legislation is included on the comparison, like some crucial ideas are left out and not included in the legislation of Ethiopia. I.e. precaution for Concrete construction, Conveyor, Cranes and Derricks, Precaution for Confined space are some lessons. The differences of these two countries OHS legislation and weakness of the OHS legislation of Ethiopia were acquired, with some suggestions legislations were promoted to be more beneficial and the findings of the study provide the gap exist on Ethiopian construction health and safety legislation’s and recommend on gaps found and insights XVII and discussions are given and recommend for reviewing FDRE health and safety legislation. It was concluded from the study that the legislation of Ethiopia have some gaps which does not clearly state different terms in detail. Specifically Ethiopian Building Proclamation does not clearly identify the scope of application of the proclamation moreover, the scope of exclusion under Ethiopian Building Construction Standard (EBCS) 14 demolishing work, is narrow and does not provide sufficient information and do not consider current construction method of Ethiopia