A survey on management perspectives of the state of workplace health and safety practices in Kenya

A baseline survey was conducted in 1995 on management perspectives of occup ational health and safety (OHS) structures and practices in Kenya. This was achieved by interviewing management and supervisory staff attending 1 week multi-disciplinary courses that were organized by the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) and the International Labour Office (ILO) at hotel venues i n Kenya. The purpose of the survey was to gain some insight into work safet y conditions in Kenya and to assess the potential for a new OHS manual to m eet existing knowledge gaps. The manual was locally developed in 1993/4 by Kenyan OHS experts in collaboration with colleagues from the Swedish Nation al Institute for Working Life. Results of the survey from 65 participants i ndicated that most workplace managers were not familiar with the Kenyan wor k safety legislation. Work injuries were largely attributable to working wi th dangerous machinery. Occupational diseases and HIV/AIDS were cited as ot her causes of workplace morbidity and mortality. Although most respondents (70%) were satisfied with their work safety conditions, only 37% said their workplaces were annually audited by labour inspectors while 45% said injur ed workers were not treated well by management. Many workplaces (65%) viola ted the mandatory legal requirement on the establishment of health and safe ty committees. The OHS resource person and course content were rated highly by most respondents (96%). The foregoing results provided the basis of a n eeds analysis for future OHS programs in Kenya. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science L td. All rights reserved.