Abstract:
The main purpose of the study was to determine the safety needs of site workers in the building construction industry in Enugu State. Four research questions and four null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The population of the study was 182 respondents comprising of 11 technical instructors of Government Technical Colleges, 36 management staff and 135 craftsmen from registered building construction industries under study. The instrument used for collection of data was a structured questionnaire with four sections. The instrument was pilot tested on 20 respondents comprising of six management staff, four technical instructors and 10 craftsmen. After being subjected to validation by three experts the reliability coefficients of the instrument was calculated to be 0.71using Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient. The analysis of data was carried out using mean to answer the research questions. The hypotheses were tested using ANOVA at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of this study revealed that most importantly, use of personal protective equipment, maintaining good standard of housekeeping, providing adequate ventilation, proper handling of materials and conducting first aid training for workers are safety needs required by site workers that cut across all the building activity areas this study investigated. Based on the findings, it was recommended that site workers, building contractors and technical teachers should be re-trained on safety needs and policy makers and curriculum experts integrate the safety needs into the curriculum.
