Knowledge of Occupational Hazards, Attitude and Practice of Occupational Safety Measures Among Construction Workers in Different Building Sites Located in Ibeju-Lekki Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria.

Abstract

This is a descriptive cross sectional study aimed at studying the knowledge of occupational hazards, attitude to and practice of occupational safety measures and prevalence of occupational injuries among construction workers in different building sites located at Ibeju-Lekki Local Government in Lagos State. A structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used for construction workers present at the sampled building sites with active ongoing construction activities for six weeks duration. Multistage Clustering sampling was used and a total of 420 respondents participated in the study. Most of the respondents were between 25 to 34 years of age with a mean value of 29.46 ± 7.08 years. The mean knowledge of occupation hazards of respondents was 51.9 ± 17.3 with the majority of respondent (61.9%) having good knowledge of construction occupational hazards. Poor attitude to occupational safety measures with mean value of 45.4 ± 12.8 and poor practice of occupational safety measures with mean value of 31.9 ± 10.4 was observed. A higher proportion of respondents reported cases of injuries ranging from puncturing of foots by sharp objects (95.2%), falling on ground level (89.5%) and injury while handling, lifting or carrying loads (87.4%). Respondents’ knowledge of occupational hazards was found to be statistically associated with their attitude to and practice of occupational measures while their attitude to safety measure is statistically associated with their practice. Hence, the need to provide adequate information on construction hazards and improve the attitude to occupational safety measures for high practice of safety measures especially the utilization of personal protective equipment