Image courtesy: WAM
Contractors booked in Abu Dhabi safety blitz
ABU DHABI, October 30, 2018
The Abu Dhabi City Municipality recently registered 44 offences and issued 199 warnings to building contractors and consultants to ensure the safety of workers at construction sites and mitigate potential hazards in workplaces.
The municipality has called on all contractors and consultants to take preventive measures and abide by the applicable environmental, health and safety (EHS) standards set by the municipality, reported Emirates news agency Wam.
The three-day campaign covered several areas in Abu Dhabi Island, Saadiyat Island, Khalifa City, Shakhbout City and Mohammed bin Zayed City. It targeted construction sites to ensure compliance with the EHS standards.
The municipality has spotted certain cases during the campaign that fall short of the EHS standards. Examples include the lack of entry points, unsafe work-at-height practices, non-compliance with the personal protective equipment, ignoring temporary on-site fencing, casual storing of building materials, dumping of waste at non-designated areas and failure to service firefighting equipment.
The campaign launched in accordance with Law No. 16 of 2009, amendments of Law No. 04 of 1983 governing building works, as well as Law No. 02 of 2012 for safeguarding public appearance, health and public tranquillity.
To enhance the practices at construction sites, the municipality holds several awareness-raising workshops throughout the year; which help construction companies to improve the management of their EHS systems to bring them in conformity with Abu Dhabi EHS Management Systems.
It also seeks to furnish the concerned bodies at construction sites with the latest updates of the EHS practices, and the revisions of the municipality’s booklet for improving the performance of entities seeking accreditation of their EHS management systems.
The process of monitoring and observing common mistakes identified during revisions of EHS systems submitted by companies will help these entities to avoid such mistakes and obtain the accreditation for their systems at construction sites.
