Musculoskeletal Disorder among Municipal Solid Waste Collectors

Objective: This cross sectional study investigates the prevalence of MSDs among solid waste collectors.Method: Data collection was conducted through face to face structured interviews with waste collectors using Nordic. Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ). Next, Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) was used to observe the workers’ exposure to the risk factors. Result: Results revealed that, the highest prevalence of MSDs symptoms during last 12 months is low back pain (54.50%) followed by upper back pain (27.30%) and at shoulder region (22.70%). RULA analysis of the observed results showed that 43.20% of the waste collectors have scored 7 indicates postural changes must be done immediately. Meanwhile 45.5% of waste collectors scored 5 an indication of postural changes must be carried out soon. From the chi-square analysis, the results displayed a significant association between neck and low back pain prevalence with the identified risk level at p<0.05. Conclusion: Findings from this study provided an evidence of a significant association between MSDs symptoms reported in NMQ and the risk level exposed by the respondents obtained by RULA. Physical demanding activities among waste collectors such as handling heavy workload, awkward posture and repetitive task might be the reason of the association

Teknologi Intervensi Cuaca dan Aplikasi Big Data untuk elakkan banjir dan kehilangan harta benda

Turunnya hujan merupakan salah satu bukti kebesaran Allah SWT. Hujan terhasil dari satu kitaran hidrologi yang melibatkan proses kondensasi sehingga air dapat diturunkan sekali gus menyejukkan permukaan bumi. Walau bagaimanapun, bagaikan api, hujan yang kecil boleh menjadi kawan, apabila ia besar dan melimpah-ruah, ia menjadi lawan (bencana alam)

Challenges in managing occupational safety and health for SMEs in the construction industry: A review

The construction industry is known as one of the largest industries in Malaysia. In the construction industry, different parties include clients, consultants and contractors that perform various roles in completing the project. It is believed that small-grade contractors are widely exposed to the highest rate of accidents or risks compared to medium and large-grade contractors (G5- G7) in the construction industry. Therefore, to clarify the issues on the safety matter, this paper has discussed the problem faced by small-grade contractors that influence the implementation of safety practices on site. It is hoped issues that arose will be caught by other parties to further work on improving construction safety as a whole

A review on ergonomic assessment tool at small and medium enterprise (SME) industries

An ergonomic assessment is a foundation for designing a comfortable workplace, which is safer and healthier with less injuries, optimized wellbeing, and improved overall workplace performance. Previous studies showed that most of the ergonomic assessment tools assess physical risk factors related to Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD). It is interesting to investigate other ergonomic risk factors that are important to include in an ergonomic assessment tool that is related to workers’ productivity in SME industries. This study set out to review the ergonomic assessment tools that have been widely used in Small and Medium (SME) Industries. To achieve the study objective, the review was conducted by searching the Google Scholar and Science Direct database. About 83 articles were identified in the first process. However, only 25 articles are included in this study after the screening process. The review found that there is lacking assessment on other ergonomic risk factors, such as psychosocial and cognitive risk factors that would also contribute to workers' productivity. Many ergonomic assessment tools that have been used in Small and Medium (SME) Industries only focused on assessing the physical risk factors that affect MSD. The knowledge and understanding of various ergonomic assessment tools will help the researchers plan the next step to improve the tool that will assess the significant ergonomic risk factors that affect worker's productivity. It might help to establish a common set of ergonomic assessment tools that are more effective, efficient, and user-friendl

The theories of accident causation model development

Accidents occur in all types of industry resulting in injury, fatalities and damage to human, assets or environment. Occupational accidents are substantial expense to the society and individual companies. Accident causation models can specify and explain from different perspectives how an accident occurs. The following concepts are successfully explained by accident causation models: (i) why accidents happen, and (ii) how accidents happen. These models serve as a crucial theoretical foundation for safety research because they provide support for a thorough method of accident analysis and prevention. This study reviews accident causation models established by previous researchers and summarizes their findings as follows: (i) the function and history of accident causation models, and (ii) the strength and limitation of accident causation model. The development trends of several accident causation models are compared and analyzed

Reliability Analysis of Covid-19 Risk Management System in Malaysia Higher Learning Institution

Reliability concerns the extent to which a measurement of a phenomenon provides a stable and consistent result. Reliability is also concerned with repeatability. For example, a test will be reliable if measurement is repeated and conducted under constant conditions, hence will give the same result. This article attempts to present the result of a reliability study in the development of the Covid-19 risk management system in a Malaysia Institution of Higher Learning. The system is called C19-HIRAO. Two types of reliability study were explored for this purpose namely interrater reliability study and test-retest method. Interrater reliability study consists of Cohen’s Kappa statistic and percent agreement (conventional method). Interrater Cohen’s Kappa and Test-retest method were performed by the raters from Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP). The result proved that the developed C19-HIRAO has achieved an almost perfect agreement (0.92), moderate agreement (0.75), and very high relationship (1.00) for Interrater percentage agreement, Interrater Cohen’s Kappa, and test-retest method respectively. In conclusion, although this system is still newly developed, the risk rating value obtained is consistent among different raters. The value of this risk rating is also stable and reliable over the time when test-retest reliability is conducted within the stipulated time frame by the same rater

New and emerging occupational risk and associations with small and medium enterprise (SMEs) in Malaysia: A review

Other than traditional occupational risks, new and emerging risk or known as ‘NER’ is initially explored by European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) in 2002. The fundamental of NER is provided by EU-OSHA with four export forecasts on emerging risk associated with physical, psychological, chemical and biological. The study of NER is considered as a new discipline that needs a better clarification on the definition of the idea itself. Meanwhile, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) contributed to the high rate of accident leading to high compensation and economic loss. This paper strives for reviewing the definitions of NER and association with SMEs. Journal articles were compiled from Scopus and Web of Science. The keywords used in the selection of the articles are reviews, definition, risk, occupational risk, new and emerging risk and SMEs. Based on the finding of the literature reviews of NER, issues of risk in Malaysia SMEs were explored and categorised accordingly

Ergonomics study in the stress level among Electronics Assembly Line Workers

Human and cognitive ergonomics become one of essential elements in industrial field nowadays due to employer concern on physical, spiritual and emotional of their workers. The need of industrial today required operator’s cognitive functions with less manual human control but in reality human judgement cannot be eliminate as there are various task that only can be perform by human. The objective of this study is to investigate the level of stress among Muslim electronics assembly line workers in electronic factories in Malaysia. The method used in this study is a survey questionnaire. The study is to compare the stress level between male and female, different ages of worker, years of working experience and task deliver in the plant to perform their duty and contribute to company. The tool administered is DASS 42 questions which distributed to the 360 worker from different level which is staffs and operators. Based on it, emWavePro device are used to test workers biofeedback performance in order to determine target persons for stress management module implementation. Workers performances in terms of productivity are measure after complete module implementation. The result may shows that workers that undergo this programed as a subjects improve their work performance by increasing productivity. Workers may came to work with positive attitude that impact positive environment to the plant. Using DASS, 319 of electronics assembly line workers are evaluated and from that 18 workers are identified with extremely severe of depression, anxiety and stress. From 18 workers, 61.1% are come from age between 19 and 29 years old with working experience less than 5 years. These 18 workers had potential to influence others that can disturb positive environment on the plant and change it to negative environment. Cognitive ergonomics is one of important elements to be focus as it impact workers performance every day. Not only physical, spiritual and emotional of the workers also contribute to the plant achievement in general

Creating a culture of prevention in occupational safety and health practice: perceived body discomfort in two sitting positions

Prolonged sitting is one of the factors for back discomfort. Sitting in the same position for long periods of time is worse. This experimental based study was conducted to achieve three objectives. There were to 1) identify whether is there any differences between perceived body discomfort among respondents before and after upright sitting, 2) identify whether is there any differences between perceived body discomfort among respondents before and after slump sitting and 3) compare the level of perceived body discomfort among respondents after two sitting postures. Thirty young and healthy adults were recruited as study respondents. Each respondent was asked to sit in a posture either upright or slump for 30 minutes. Respondents were then rated their body discomfort using Borg CR-10 scale before and after sitting. Another sitting posture was carried out after one day interval. There is a significant difference between perceived body discomfort among respondents before and after upright and slump sitting. Body discomfort of upright sitting was shown significantly greater than slump sitting. Although, slump sitting caused less discomfort than upright, but it proven by previous studies did not provide benefit to occupational safety and health practice in preventing occupational health related disease

Demographic factors and life satisfaction: A study among industrial female operators

Employee well-being is crucial thing to performance and organizational success which has been studied extensively in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. Those employees with higher levels of well-being are less probable to quit and are typically more productive at the workplace. Therefore, the objective of this research is to examine the effect of several demographic factors on well-being such as life satisfaction among industrial female operators. There were 313 employees of an electronic component manufacturing company who participated in this research. A Life Satisfaction Scale consisting of five questions regarding the global cognitive evaluation of one's life was administered. The collected demographic factors were age, tenure, department or division, and dependents. The results indicated that tenure and marital status were related to life satisfaction. Those who are married and work longer in the company have a higher level of satisfaction than their peers. Meanwhile, the age, department, and dependents were not significant determinants of life satisfaction. Our research indicates the importance of implementing various strategies to improve life satisfaction, especially among newly recruited employees