The safety laws are being flouted at construction sites all over Bahrain, with potentially disastrous results, according to experts.

A call for tougher action has gone out from the Bahrain Health and Safety Society (BHSS) and the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) contractors' committee in this regard.

The two groups, for long engaged in a campaign to clamp down on such activities, also made a fresh appeal to the Labour Ministry to take strict measures against unsafe methods and penalise violators.

'We can see workers on scaffolding and without any protection gadgets like belts or harnesses,' pointed out BHSS technical committee head Yasser Rahim.

'Unsafe scaffolding is one of the most important issues facing workers, especially those in smaller companies. There have been accidents in the past and there will be more if urgent and strict action is not taken,' he added.

Anyone working at a height of two metres or above has to be protected by a safety belt and a harness, under Bahrain's law, said Rahim.

'I do not see this happening in Bahrain at many places, though the bigger companies are generally aware of this and implement the rules,' he said.

Rahim noted that the belt would prevent the worker from falling off the edge of the scaffolding and, “if that failed, the harness would prevent him from falling to the ground, until help arrived.”

'These are mandatory requirements and have to be followed,' he added.

'There are also rules which govern installation of scaffolding and its erection has to be supervised by experts, after which another expert has to certify the scaffolding as safe.'

In most cases, the scaffolding is just loosely placed planks on unsatisfactorily tied pipes and could give way, with potentially deadly results.

'In many cases, the worker on the scaffolding has been killed or maimed for life and people have been severely injured by the falling planks and pipes,' noted  Rahim.

He said the BHSS takes up such cases regularly with the ministry which, in turn, also takes action.BCCI contractors' committee head Samir Nass said most companies obeyed the law, but many did not.

 'Human life is of paramount importance for the organisation and should be given the priority it deserves,' he observed.

The companies which do not follow regulations are the ones that report the maximum casualties, many of them fatal.

In December last year, Bahrain's companies were slammed by a top international safety watchdog for putting workers at risk, when British Safety Council and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) chairwoman Nina Wrightson visited Bahrain.

She had pointed out then that many companies in Bahrain ignored their employees' health and safety because they did not want to spend money on precautionary measures.

Wrightson had called for the government to impose tougher laws and for bigger companies to ‘audit’ smaller firms, to ensure they meet safety standards.

She said smaller companies in particular thought of expenditure on safety as an unnecessary expense, rather than an investment.

In March this year, a call for better guidelines for companies to prevent accidents at work, went out from a senior health and safety professional.

RRC Training and Consultancy Middle East managing director Hassan Al Aradi  said the government should do more than just issue decrees and also publish guidelines describing how companies should go about following them. TradeArabia News Service