Phil Dobson - Waterloo - 16 June 2010 - www.ourmaninsierraleone.com

Implementing an appropriate standard of Health & Safety in Sierra Leone is a challenging task. We are working closely with the Contractor to keep the site staff fit and healthy and maintain an excellent record of minimal accidents. We are providing personal protective equipment (PPE) to all site staff. The Contractor’s past experience of PPE being taken from a previous site has left him distrustful of the workers and makes it difficult for us to enforce his responsibility in providing PPE. Another quandary that we find ourselves in is that one cultural trend is to carry items on the head.

The contractors past experience is more likely down to poor management of the situation. Good control of PPE it is less likely for equipment to go missing. The PPE that CODEP has provided for the workers will remain on site and each worker has to sign for their own PPE in the morning when they arrive and evening when they leave. The site clerk is responsible for all items of PPE and is his duty to ensure the items are kept on site.

Providing hard hats presents an interesting dilema. It provides the protection required on building sites but also presents a new risk. By providing the hard hats and setting rules that the workers must wear the hard hat whilst on site then it introduces a conundrum in how they carry materials. The workers use headpans that they carry on their head. Culturally Sierra Leonians carry items on their head – from the young to the old everyone carries nearly anything on their head. This is the most efficient method for carrying items over long distances and leaves both hands free. By introducing the new safety measures we may increase the risk of an accident, or if they extend their arms above their head this will increase the strain on the shoulders and could result in occupational health problems.

Already the workers have changed the method of carrying the headpan. Prior to having to wear the hard hats they would balance the head pan on their head and keep it stable with their hands. Now they have to carry it above their head and hence all the weight is transferred through their arms increasing the strain on the shoulders. What was an efficient method of transport has become inefficient. Maybe the hard hat needs to be modified to allow people to carry head pan’s on their head!

(There is a market here, if anyone takes it I’d like a cut).