The construction sector in the country has been booming over the years. Together with this, accidents and mishaps at the construction sites have been on the rise too calling for relevant authorities to put in place appropriate measures. During a recent seminar on construction safety, participants discussed the need for establishing safety committees and recruiting safety officers in the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources and construction companies.
Last year alone, Bhutan recorded more than 40 cases of accidents at construction sites. Of it, 40 per cent were fatal accidents.
Going by numbers, Thimphu has the highest number of constructions taking place compared to other districts. As such, more accidents have also been reported from Thimphu which many participants argued could have been avoided.
In July this year, a six-year-old boy died and another four-year-old was critically injured in an accident when a hume pipe rolled over them at a construction site at Hejo. In a similar case, a 17-year-old girl, in one of the schools under Thimphu Dzongkhag, died after she met an accident with prefabricated concrete windows on the school campus, a month ago. And these are just the numbers of cases which are reported in the media.
“Of course, the Ministry of Labour and Human resources play a very crucial role but there are also relevant agencies which play a very pivotal role in terms of preventing such type of accidents. When it comes to health and safety, we cannot leave everything to the ministry, we have a lot of relevant agencies that need to come into pictures as well,” said Phuentsho Dhendup from the Labour Ministry.
Tenzin, the Director-General of the Department of Roads said, generally there is a lack of awareness on safety measures in the construction sector. Moreover, he said, most of the constructions works are carried out by the engineers who are not trained to look into safety measures at sites.
“Engineers as such have lots of works including procurement, designing, implementation and monitoring. So they cannot take up multiple responsibilities of being a safety officer. Secondly, their capacity is not in safety aspects of constructions. So it will be very timely for agencies to adopt safety officers,” he said.
Phuentsho Dhendup from the labour ministry said the ministry has integrated the labour inspection system and that the construction companies have already established safety committees.
“As of now, there are safety committees established in ninety companies of which only three construction companies are functional as of now. Of course, it is not something that we can achieve overnight. But slowly these things are picking up as compared to the past few years,” he said.
The ministry is currently discussing with the Construction Development Board regarding the establishment of safety committees and safety officers in the construction companies.
Pema Tshewang
