CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

The concern of occupational health and safety is a global issue now taking a new turn. The main contributory factors towards this idiosyncrasy seem to be rapid industrial and agricultural development that are taking place in developing countries, and the emergence of new products and product processes from these places (Olouchi, 2015).  Initially, employers were not concerned with the health and safety of their employees at work. An employee was not provided with safety and health equipment and s/he risked getting hurt at work anytime s/he goes about his/her duties. An injured employee in countries like U.S for example had to litigate to obtain compensation, which in most cases was not successful, and the cost of doing so even prevented employees from going to court (Olouchi, 2015). 

 In the middle Ages, guilds worked at assisting sick workers and their families. In 1556, the German scholar, Agricola, advanced the science of industrial hygiene even further when, in his book De Re Metallica, he described the diseases of miners and prescribed preventive measures. The book included suggestions for mine ventilation and worker protection, discussed mining accidents, and described diseases associated with mining occupations such as silicosis (Tekele, 2006).

Industrial hygiene received another major boost in 1743 when Ulrich Ellenborg published a pamphlet on occupational diseases and injuries among gold miners. Ellenborg also wrote about the toxicity of carbon monoxide, mercury, lead, and nitric acid.  In England in the 18th century, Percival Pott, as a result of his findings on the insidious effects of soot on chimney sweepers, was a major force in getting the British Parliament to pass the Chimney-Sweepers Act of 1788. The passage of the English Factory Acts beginning in 1833 marked the first effective legislative acts in the field of industrial safety. The Acts, however, were intended to provide compensation for accidents rather than to control their causes. Later, various other European nations developed workers’ compensation acts, which stimulated the adoption of increased factory safety precautions and the establishment of medical services within industrial plants (Mengesha, 2006).

According to the WHO (1985), the work place is a potentially hazardous environment where millions of employees pass at least one-third of their lifetime. This fact has been recognised for a long time, although developed very slowly until 1900.  There has been an awareness of industrial hygiene since antiquity. The environment and its relation to workers health were recognised as early as the fourth century BC when Hippocrates noted lead toxicity in the mining industry. Occupational Health and safety is a complex area. The main objective of health and safety programs is to provide a safe and better work environment for those involved (Amazon, 2006). Since occupational safety is to avoid accidents and decrease those aspects of workstation, it will lead to immediate violent harm to personnel (Geldart et al., 2012). These conditions lead to unsafe workplaces and a lack of quality in the work environment (Jackson et al., 2009).

According to Hofmann et al. (2020), as the Covid-19 pandemic persists, the risk of workers contracting the fast-spreading virus exacerbates. The pandemic threatens business premises and the flow of their activities, and warns of severe health effects and a social and economic repercussion in addition to the burden it bears on workers and the challenge it imposes on work systems. Therefore, occupational health and safety systems were among the main mechanisms to confront the threat of the pandemic, which should be achieved to limit the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and to provide a reasonable balance between personal safety and commitment to work, whether in the workplace or during remote work from home.

Occupational health and safety measures also contribute to providing support for a safe and healthy return to the workplace after the quarantine period, self-isolation or the period of working from home. Legally, the employer is the one who bears the first responsibility with regard to health and safety in the workplace, and he/she is responsible for taking all reasonable precautions in order to protect the worker. He/she is also responsible for spreading a strong culture of health and safety in the workplace that expresses respect for people in the workplace (Hofmann, Burke & Zohar, 2020).

Occupational health and safety in work environment is a serious issue that attracts the attention of both the government and the public. Employers are faced with more stringent laws to create safe work environment for their employees (Norine et al., 2016). In framework of industrial development in a country, big problems that always arise are work accidents, occupational diseases and negative impacts of the industry environment. Of course, these negative consequences become the responsibility of the people around the industry and the government in general (Bennet, 1995).

Work environment problems and their consequences in terms of the ill health of employees have long been of interest to researchers. Considerable research has shown that poor physical and psychosocial working conditions can lead to a deterioration of individual health and wellbeing (Clarke & Cooper, 2004). However, this concerns the effects that workplace conditions have on employee safety. The growing problem of workplace hazards is also evident from international statistics, showing that about two million people die every year from work-related accidents and diseases around the world. Even when focusing only on workplace accidents, as many as 270 million fatal and non-fatal accidents are estimated to occur each year (International Labour Organization, 2014).

Employers must conduct a workplace assessment process to determine the necessary measures to protect the health and safety of their workers. Workers should work from home if possible, and the evaluation process is carried out in consultation between employers and the Health and Safety Committee if any or with a health and safety representative This evaluation supports the internal responsibility system in the workplace, which ensures that everyone in the workplace has a role in maintaining health and safety in the workplace, such as the employer, supervisors, workers, health and safety representatives or joint health and safety committees (Hofmann, Burke & Zohar, 2020).

The response to the Covid-19 pandemic for workers in public health services and in the field of health care has a great potential for exposure to stress during their work in a health emergency situation, so these workers need psychological support to prevent negative impacts on their physical, psychological and social health. Furthermore, occupational safety has been increasing with the goals of both enhancing workplace safety and saving lives. Though a significant amount of progress has been made over the last century in injury and fatality reduction (Hofmann, Burke & Zohar, 2020), as the Covid-19 pandemic persists, the risk of workers contracting the fast-spreading virus exacerbates.

On the other hand, the work of those involved in occupational health and safety in health institutions requires ensuring that safety means: personal protection and equipment are in conformity with the standards recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for each task according to the degree of its proximity and its dealings with people with Covid-19. The pandemic threatens business premises and the flow of their activities, and warns of severe health effects and a social and economic repercussion, in addition to the burden it bears on employees and the challenge it imposes on the working systems. Therefore, occupational health and safety systems were among the main mechanisms to confront the threat of the pandemic, which should be achieved to limit the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and to provide a reasonable balance between personal safety and commitment to work, whether in the workplace or during remote work from home (Hofmann, Burke, & Zohar, 2020).

Safety is a very wide concept that refers to the avoidance of any kind of accident leading to harm or injury to human beings (Piètre-Cambacédès & Bouissou, 2013). The concept of safety is also broad in the sense that it can range from regarding accidents or incidents that cause only minor physical injuries, such as a bruise or a small cut, to major injuries that require intense hospital care or that may result in death. In addition, given the focus on avoiding harm, safety also includes efforts aimed at understanding the causes of accidents and at preventing new ones from occurring. Work on safety is therefore also often concerned with improving the safety-related behaviors of the employees (Smith, Karsh, Carayon, & Conway, 2003).

Occupational health and safety policies include all activities and actions held by the organization to reduce hazardous conditions and dangerous acts in the work environment. The first-line defense of organization for accident avoidance is to reduce hazardous condition, and he also stated that in designing safe and healthy condition, the organization needs to concentrate more on weak workers in workstation either due to lack of instruction, improper personnel defensive equipment, physical limitation or cultural reasons (Kombo and Tromp, 2008). Its responsibility of every worker and those under contract in the organization is to eliminate the maximum extent of the possible hazard to safety and health and achieve a healthy and safe work environment. Occupational health and safety aim to reduce the impact of work-related illness and hazards at the company’s workplace (Desseler, 2008).

Safety programmes deal with the prevention of accidents and with minimising the resulting loss and damage to persons and property. They relate more to systems of work than the working environment, but both health and safety programmes are concerned with protection against hazards, and their aims and methods are clearly inter-linked. Almost 20 million working days a year are lost because of work-related illness. Two million people say they suffer from an illness they believe was caused by their work. Muscular disorders, including repetitive strain injury and back pain, are by far the most commonly reported illnesses with 1.2 million affected, and the numbers are rising. The next biggest problem is stress, which 500,000 people say is so bad that it is making them ill. These are large and disturbing figures and they show that high priority must be given to creating and maintaining programmes for the improvement of occupational health (Armstrong, 2006).

The achievement of a healthy and safe place of work and the elimination of maximum extent of possible hazards to health and safety is the responsibility of everyone employed in an organization as well as those working under contract. The occupational safety and health programs are designed to minimize the impact of work related illnesses and accidents arising from the work (Armstrong, 2012). Designing and implementing intervention programs is more challenging to organizations/or companies with none operations around the world because it is more difficult to monitor progress related to this challenge and responsibility of Human resource professionals and organizations in managing the conditions resulting from major diseases epidemics and major disasters because the magnitude of the impact of diseases and disasters, organizations must be proactive in managing occurrence (Stewart and McGoldrick, 1996).

The risk assessment process must take into account the surrounding environment, the required task, the risk and the available resources, including personal protective equipment and the possibility of taking preventive measures, and this process must also include the collective accommodation provided by the employer for his workers, and it must also take into account the groups that are most exposed to occupational risks that threaten the occupational health and safety for workers in basic public services such as public transportation, security, police and other frontline workers in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic (Hofmann, Burke, & Zohar, 2020).

Dessler (2008) further argues that healthy and safe working environment does not just happen, it has to be created. The organizations with the best reputation for safety have developed well planned, thorough health and safety programs. Concern for safety should begin at the highest level within the organization, manager and then supervisor. If an organization takes effective safety and health measures, fewer of its employees will have short or long term ill effects as a result of being employed at that organization.

Nzuve (2009) believe that organisations depend on employees as working partners and fellow members of the organization community. The achievement of a healthy and safe place of work and elimination of maximum extent of possible hazards in an organization as well as those working there under contract. By reducing the rates and severity of occupational accidents, diseases, workplace violence, stress-related illness, and improving the quality of work for their employees, organisations become significantly effective. Organisations invest in health and safety programs in part for humanitarian reasons but also out of concern of controlling costs of many kinds, extending from times Occupational Safety and Health Act for non-compliance to health insurance premiums, to payments for non-productive labour (Nzuve, 2009).

They also benefit from having healthy employees as some have been willing to invest for this purpose by setting wellness programs and facilities (Miner & Crane, 1995). Many interventions ccan be used to improve workplace safety and health. Among the most common are programs designed to reduce accidents and injuries, reduce diseases, improve employees’ ability to manage stress and overall health. While some of the interventions are intended to change the lifestyles and non-work behaviours of employees. All these interventions can reduce the many costs associated with employees’ injuries, illness and death (Werner, 2009).

Closer home, most in Africa countries and organisations have ignored the issue of occupational health and safety practices.  The ILO reported that 63,900 work deaths occurred in the 54 African countries and that an estimated 1,560,000 disabling work injuries occurred (ILO, 2010). The fundamental perspective on why majority of African countries and organizations struggle to foster an effective occupational health and safety workplace is that most employers put greater emphasis on productivity and profitability while compromising health and safety standards, procedures, policies and programmes (ILO, 2010).

In Kenya, the status of occupational safety and health situation/conditions is an issue of growing concern by the employers, government, managers, industrialists, workers and other stakeholders. Health and safety has not been given increasing emphasis by managers, employers, employees, trade unions, employers’ associations and other stakeholders in recent years (Nyakang’o, 2009). The harmful consequences of occupational hazards for workers were brought to the attention of the Cameroon legislature during the colonisation period. The earliest measures taken against these risks were to provide compensation (Labour Code for the Overseas Territories). However, these measures quickly revealed their limitations. Compensation could not restore things to what they were before, which meant that priority had to be given to prevention rather than compensation.

Nearer home, Cameroon introduced a system, which could minimize the incidence of occupational accidents, and occupational diseases if all those involved played their parts.  Although the system, which was introduced, was well designed and effective in theory, despite this introduction, it did not achieve its aims. What are the weaknesses of our organization? In order to answer this question it is wise to consider the issue of prevention and compensation for occupational risks in Cameroon first, before moving on to a critical analysis of the Cameroon prevention system and consideration of future prospects (Ouwe, 2007).

Furthermore, The role of this service is to monitor conditions of hygiene at the workplace, risks of contagion, the state of health of workers, their spouses and children housed by the employer; take appropriate preventive measures; and provide medical care. Medical doctors provide this service; priority is given to the recruitment of qualified occupational health practitioners who may be assisted by trained paramedical personnel. Because of these measures, occupational health practitioners are an essential link in the prevention and diagnosis of occupational diseases and the updating of their tables (Ouwe, 2012).

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Health at work and healthy work environments are among the most valuable assets of individuals, communities, companies and countries. Occupational safety and health is an important strategy not only to ensure the health and safety of workers, but also contribute positively to productivity, quality of products, work motivation, job satisfaction and thereby to the overall quality of life of individuals and society (WHO, 1994).The importance of healthy and safe policies and practices is, sadly, often underestimated by those concerned with managing businesses and by individual managers within those businesses. But it cannot be emphasized too strongly that the prevention of accidents and elimination of health and safety hazards are a prime responsibility of management and managers in order to minimize suffering and loss (Armstrong, 2006).

Organisations have failed to prevent accidents not just because of incomplete control of the circumstances, which give rise to them, but because of our partial knowledge of how things really are and, of course, our inevitably incomplete knowledge of what will happen in the future. Human beings in this sense fail to bring order to an essentially chaotic and dangerous world – not just because it defies their efforts to control it but because they do not fully understand its complexity and randomness. The result is a potentially dangerous tendency to deny that error and disorder are permanent features of the natural world and all human undertakings in particular. Organisations have become complacent and fail to take preventative action. Good investigation of accidents, where it takes place, tends almost invariably to show that failures to prevent them are rooted either in weaknesses in risk assessment or in the implementation of control measures (Bibbings, 2003).

One of the most valuable assets of any organisation, communities, companies, and countries are health and safety at the work station. Occupational Health and safety is not only a crucial policy to keep employees safe but also participate in inefficiency, employees’ promotion, and also the overall quality of life of persons and community. In a competitive environment, occupational health and safety are one of the requirements that employers need to meet the expectation of employees and keep them safe from hazards and illness in the work environment. Hence it will enhance the workplace especially the hospitals should be safe from health hazards. The management of the various hospitals have drafted a series of policies as concerns the health and safety of its employees be it medical practitioners, administrative assistance, cleaners, guards, amongst others. But little has been done as concerns the development and implementation of health and safety programs to follow up the day to day occupational hygiene and health of the employees and their working environment.

In a nutshell, some studies (Oluoch ,2015) which seek to examine the effect of occupational safety and health programs on employees’ performance have focused on occupational safety and health practices, strategies and compliance on performance/productivity of the employees, and their findings have established that occupational health and safety enhances employees’ performance.  However, none of the studies conducted have provided or linked the relationship between occupational safety and health to performance of organisations as a whole, especially in the health sector. Furthermore, studies (Bentil, 2018) covered only the occupational health and safety practices in the mines. There is the need to conduct studies that would capture the subject at all organisations health sectors. It is from the knowledge that the study seeks to unpack the effect of occupational health safety programs on employees’ commitment in the case of Covid-19 reanimation centers and hence, the following objectives and corresponding Hypotheses were framed.

1.3 Research Questions

The research problem raises two fundamental questions to be answered: the main research question and the specific research questions.

1.3.1 Main Research Question

What are the effects of occupational health safety programs on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers?

1.3.2 Specific Research Questions

The specific research questions are simply stated as:

1. What is the effect of occupational health surveillance on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers?
2. What are the impacts of health/safety inspection on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers?
3. What are the effects of health /safety training on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers?

1.4 Objectives of the study

The objectives are segmented into two: the main objectives and the specific objectives of the study.

1.4.1 Main objective

The main objective is the effect of occupational health safety programs on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers.

1.4.2 Specific Research Objectives

The specific research objectives are state thus:

1. To examine the effect of occupational health surveillance on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers.
2. To assess the effects of health/safety inspection on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers.
3. To evaluate effects of health/safety training on employees’ commitment in Covid-19 reanimation centers.