The attitude of workers toward construction site safety - A study of site safety in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, the construction industry has a very poor safety record and the loss of productivity in terms of cost and time is great. Not only are there tremendous direct and indirect cost suffered by government and employers, industrial accidents also bring injuries and fatality to workers. It is said "limited or even negative response of workers to the safety message is one of the problems in implementing safety work". This paper attempts to investigate the workers' attitudes and their awareness of the importance of safety measures in construction site. A survey has been conducted for this purpose. The results show that many workers have limited education and they admitted that it is not their responsibility to comply with safety regulations for the main contractors. Also, due to the multi-levels of sub-contracting, many workers have no sense of belonging to the main contractors and supervisions on safety measures are inadequate.