Construction industry prosecution cases under Malaysian occupational safety and health legislation

Abstract

In 2015, a total of 140 construction workers, which consists of 47 locals and 93 foreigners (DOSH) suffered fatal injuries from on-site accidents. These workers are prone to be involved in mishaps due to unsafe use of tools and inexperienced handling of machines and materials in construction sites. In order to prevent industrial accidents from occurring, the Malaysian government established the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 for employers or firms to use as a guideline for them. Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 (OSHA 1994) is used for employer, employee and manufacturer to put efforts in securing safety, health and welfare at work place. According to numbers of accidents occurred on construction sites, it can be assumed that the enforcement and the compliance of OSHA by both employers and employees are weak. The prosecution is the last method executed in order to penalize the violation of the act by employers. Employers often do not want to spend money to comply with safe working practices to employees. But after an accident occurs, the employer will have to spend a lot of money for compensation of accidents and penalty imposed by DOSH. So far, there is very little published data and analysis of the prosecution cases under the Malaysian OSH legislation. Thus, the objectives of this study are to analyze the most common non-compliance cases of OSH legislative provision from a collection of prosecution cases, to determine the barrier to non-compliance of OSH legislation in the construction industry and to generate ways to increase compliance to OSH legislation for the construction industry. The study was conducted through several phases. There are three phases of research methodologies to answer the three objectives. The findings assisted the study in formulating recommendations that could significantly improve the efficacy and compliance levels of OSH legislation in the construction industry in Malaysia.