Awareness of occupational hazards, and attitudes and practices towards the use of personal protective equipment among informal woodworkers: the case of the Sokoban Wood Village in Ghana

Abstract

We investigated the awareness of occupational hazards, and attitudes and practices towards the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) among informal woodworkers of the Sokoban Wood Village in Ghana. Structured questionnaires were used to collect primary data from 355 woodworkers and analysed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. The results showed that the workers are aware of PPE and knew about injuries they are exposed to. Most woodworkers had a positive attitude in terms of their perception on the necessity to use PPE but had a low frequency of PPE usage. Educational level, job type, length of service and marital status are the socio-demographic characteristics that significantly influence woodworkers’ compliance with health and safety regulations. We recommend that institutions charged with enforcement of occupational health and safety regulations should extend their monitoring roles to informal workers and liaise with local companies to supply PPE to informal woodworkers at subsidized costs.

Keywords:

• occupational accidents
• diseases and injuries
• safety culture
• safety practices
• small and medium-scale enterprises

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the executives of the woodworkers’ associations, management and respondents at the Sokoban Wood Village. They express their appreciation to the two anonymous reviewers who reviewed the earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.