Abstract:
Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) is an important aspect which allows an
organisation to systematically manage the safety and health of the workers in a
workplace. Adoption of OSH in a work environment therefore helps for the promotion
and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social wellbeing in all
occupations. Literature reveals that the apparel sector’s working environment is
mostly associated with different kinds of workers, machinery and management teams
and therefore, it should be safe and free from safety and health risks and hazards.
Although there is a growing concern on OSH hazards, a lack of attention has received
for researches on OSH in Sri Lankan context. Further, researches conducted on OSH
in Northern in Sri Lanka are hardly found. Hence, the aim of this research is to
investigate the level of exposure of employees working in apparel manufacturing
organisations in Northern Province of Sri Lanka to different OSH hazards.A comprehensive literature review identified 31number of OSH hazards of apparel
sector in the global and local contexts and the levels of exposure of the employees to
those hazards were identified through a questionnaire survey. The data were collected
from 76 number of employees working in eight different apparel manufacturing
organisations in Northern Province of Sri Lanka. The collected data were analysed
using RII (Relative Importance Index) method. As the study revealed, the hazards to
which the apparel manufacturing employees in Northern Province of Sri Lanka are
mostly exposed to are “excessive noise”, “repetitive nature of works”, “stress”,
“excessive exposure to cotton dust” and “taking imbalance diet” under physical,
ergonomic, psychological, chemical and biological hazard categories respectively.
