An Assessment of The Level of Personal Protective Equipment Usage Among Employees in Road Construction Projects:

Abstract

The use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) remains one of the best measures ensuring workplace safety for workers in the construction sector. This study assessed PPE usage amongst road construction projects in two cities of Uganda. It specifically established the level of employee awareness about PPE usage, determined management‟s involvement in implementation of PPE usage and the factors affecting usage of PPE on road construction sites. Both structured and semi- structured interviews with workers and management were conducted. Thematic, descriptive and inferential statistics including ANOVA tests, Binary logistic regression model and Relative Importance Index (RII) were ccarried out to analyze data. Results indicated that over 92% of the road construction workers were aware of PPE usage as a legal requirement at work. Masks (64%), goggles (16.4%) safety shoes (82.8%), earmuffs (17.6%) and gumboots (14.8%) were the commonly used PPEs by the workers. The common strategies for implementing PPE usage by management included setting policies and guidelines on PPE usage (64.29%) and ensuring availability of sufficient PPE to workers (61.9%) while penalties (95.05%) and incentives/awards (57.1%) were the least used strategies. The organizational factors that influenced PPEs usage among the workers included provision of PPEs by employer (RII = 0.6544) and availability of sufficient PPEs (RII = 0.5544). Psychological factors included discomfort from PPE usage (RII = 0.5232) and previous knowledge on PPE (RII = 0.4608). Economic/ environmental factors previous training on PPE (RII = 0.5976) and frequent supervision on PPE usage at workplaces (RII = 0.6616). There was no significant association between socio- economic factors namely; Age (p = 0.56), gender (p = 0.392), education level (p = 0.601), work type (p = 0.854) with PPE usage. There is need to promote organization processes such as policies and trainings on PPE usage among road construction workers by the employers and relevant authority the ministry of works.