Large companies are increasingly more or less compliant. Companies such as Hiranandani, L&T, Tata Projects, Gammon India, Hindustan Construction, Simplex, and Shapoorji Pallonji, are all Integrated Management System (IMS) certified. All workers have to wear all personal protective equipment (PPE), such as helmet, shoes, body harness, etc. They follow safety issues, and construction worker concerns force organisations to train them for safety, and quality control issues.
This also comes with the mandate of enforcement staff, a cost that is not factored into small and medium projects. As a result, the cost of compliance becomes very expensive for smaller companies. The supervisory staff to ensure safety have to remain vigilant, and maintain logistics records, on the fly. While a good reputation is a plus for large clients, for small and medium developers, it is a wasteful and an impractical effort, when the deciding factor is cost.
Residential construction accounts for over 55 percent of India’s construction profile. A very large part of this is un-engineered or is supervised by masons-turned-contractors. They rely on unskilled migrant labour that moves from job to job. Per-day productivity is the criterion of selection here, and the harness actually reduces their productivity. Also, when they leave one site and go to the next, there is no authority that inspects security on work sites. So workers themselves don't often opt for safety equipment.
The NBC has laid down safety in excavation, with the right level of supervision in all elements of foundation construction. All safety provisions for construction processes, and the right physical barriers at construction sites: scaffolding and underpinning, safety of construction workers with PPE, and work area protection, as well as health and hygiene factors and facilities for construction workers are clearly spelt out. The special requirements for foundation and basement construction with right encasement protection from landslide, etc. are covered. Working at heights with inclement weather for high winds and rainfall, and slippery work front, safe operation of construction equipment, and machineries, have also been covered.
However, these are precisely the roles where accidents occur.
Many building by-laws have incorporated the provisions of the NBC, which are guidance documents in local building rules and development control rules. But the local authorities under whose jurisdiction the enforcement falls, are under-staffed, with construction worker-safety not on high priority. That said, there are some cases of enforcement. After an accident in Porur in Chennai in 2014, all those responsible for the project were arrested for criminal negligence.
But these are few and far between. Most site owners pay the families of injured/deceased workers a compensation to settle the problem. The rural migrant families are not aware of their rights nor are they powerful enough to fight the system. State governments offer compensation to the families too. But there are few efforts at ongoing supervision and training to ensure that these fatalities are reduced. With migrant manpower freely available, and municipal governance in construction sites still at a nascent stage, things have not hit a critical level for the industry yet. Till then, worker safety will remain an afterthought in majority of India’s construction sites.