Construction safety in Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Construction industry involves activities that can endanger the lives of human being. In Indonesia safety issues are always being neglected by the construction company. It showed by the number of injuries and accidents occurred in Indonesia. Therefore, a study has been conducted to identify the root causes of accident in Jakarta construction site and to find ways of mitigating them. This study was started out by reviewing literature from books, journals and web pages. A set of questionnaire was designed to gain primary data from the respondents about safety in construction. The analysis on safety program reveals that the root causes of accident are result due to many factors and causes. Some of the critical factors are equipment requirement, management and health program, worksite analysis, hazard prevention and control, safety health training and record keeping. Some of the root causes founds are inappropriate using on equipment, out of date on safety policy, seniority on safety program, insufficient PPE stock, inappropriate arrangements to monitor the effectiveness of the inspection and analyze the results of safety inspections, workers negligence, lack of site specific safety training, and poor accident records. However, the management in general is not fully committed to safety and tends to neglect safety and the departments of labor’s inspectors do not carry out inspections so that safety issues are not well implemented. Thus, based on the analyzed data each of construction projects have safety program which included health and safety policies, responsibilities of management and employees, risk management, safety work procedures, emergency management and rehabilitation procedures. But, the obvious lack of commitment to health and safety by management has the potential for resulting accidents which make the safety program ineffective. At last, several recommendations have been made to mitigate and prevent accidents in Jakarta construction site.