Abstract:
Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) as the science and art of the anticipating, recognizing, analysing and monitoring
of hazards arising in the workplace that could harm the health and well-being of employees. Comparatively in the
manufacturing industry, OSH is considered as an essential requirement to achieve expected production targets without
any disturbances. Most of accidents, injuries and health diseases are created at working phase in the industry. This has
been a significant issue in cement manufacturing industry because Sri Lankan cement manufacturing industry employs
large number of employees where many OSH issues are presented due to complexity of the manufacturing process
and due to many other reasons. Though the practice of this concept increases over world, very less number of
researches have been conducted related to the OSH in the cement manufacturing industry in Sri Lanka. It has become
a timely requirement to ensure the safety of the employees who are working in the cement manufacturing industry.
Therefore, this study attempts to develop a framework for enhancing OSH in cement manufacturing industry in Sri
Lanka.
Initially, a comprehensive literature review was carried out to enlarge the existing knowledge on safety and health
issues associated with the employees in the cement manufacturing industry and its effect on workers and society. In
order to validate the research finding, semi-structured interviews were conducted among the three-different level of
professionals including managerial level, supervisor level and labour level form each case. Collected data from the
interviews was structured and analysed with the support of NVivo software. Empirical investigation addressed physical
accidents, injuries and various kind of health diseases were the main issues in the cement industry. It was further
identified that these issues are occurred by workplace hazards i.e. excessive cement dust, machines with moving parts,
heavy vehicle movement etc. and other factors i.e. poor working relationship among workers, risky attitudes and
behaviour of the workers etc. Although, plenty of activities have been taken placed to ensure OSH in workplace, some
challenges including, fund allocation, ensuring the safety of contract employees, unrealistic production targets,
ensuring the safety of customers and other outside parties and negligence of safe work instructions by employees were
validated. Finally, a framework was developed based on the empirical research findings to enhancing the OSH in
cement manufacturing industry in Sri Lanka
