Occupational stress, musculoskeletal disorders and other factors affecting the quality of life in Indian construction workers

ABSTRACT

The Indian construction industry is enormously growing and continuously needs to recruit workers to deliver projects. A majority of these construction workers are semi-skilled or unskilled, which puts a great deal of demand on the construction workers and predisposes them to stress at work, which in turn leads to ill health. This study was aimed at evaluating the occupational stress and other factors in the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and their impact on the quality of life of these workers. Standard questionnaires were used for assessment and six occupational groups were studied. The construction workers worked long hours and were burdened with stress and most of the workers reported musculoskeletal pain in the body parts that were mostly used during the tasks performed. These workers scored poor in all the domains of the quality of life. These data will provide a baseline for risk evaluation and would increase the effectiveness of preventive measures to be undertaken and a basis for further research in long-term follow-up studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Construction
• occupational stress
• musculoskeletal disorders
• quality of life
• OSI
• Indian workers

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the National Institute of Industrial Engineering for supporting us and to the construction workers and site managers without whom the data collection would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.