Almost 250 people are killed and 20,000 injured each year in workplace accidents. Yet, little is being done to enforce safety rules and widen insurance coverage for workers.
Mukesh Pokharel |CIJ, Nepal
Pushkar Chaudhary, 27, a resident of Krishnapur Municipality-4 in Kanchanpur, had been undergoing treatment at the Intensive Care Unit of the National Trauma Centre when the Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal (CIJ-Nepal) visited him on March 8, 2022. He had been paralysed below his waist and was unable to speak.
His wife, Soniya, had no idea when he would be allowed to return home.
“The doctors have neither asked us to take him home nor have they told us if he will recover,” Pushkar’s wife, Soniya, had told CIJ-Nepal. “We have just been praying for his recovery.”
Dhan Bahadur Thapa of Airawati-6 Simalchaur in Pyuthan. Photo Mukesh Pokharel
On June 7, Soniya informed CIJ-Nepal that Pushkar had died a month earlier.
Soniya’s prayers did not work; she returned home without Pushkar.
Pushkar was working as a mason at a building construction site at Kailali in Tikapur in January when an iron rod fell on him, leaving him unconscious. Diagnosed with spinal injury, he was referred to the Trauma Centre in Kathmandu.
Like Pushkar, many workers in the construction sector are killed or injured each year as they fail to follow safety protocols. One such worker is Dhan Bahadur Thapa, 22, a resident of Airawati-6 in Pyuthan. He wanted to travel to South Korea for work after completing high school, but when he failed the language test, he took up masonry in his village.
In February, when he was working at a construction site, the scaffolding he had climbed on came crashing on him. His colleagues rescued him in minutes, but it was already too late. “I had already become paralysed by then,” Thapa said.
Thapa returned home after spending two months at the Lumbini Provincial Hospital in Butwal. But his condition has not improved. He is being taken care of by his wife, Pushpa, who is now five months pregnant.
Workers continue to lose their lives when they meet with accidents such as getting an electric shock, falling from scaffolding, getting injured by falling rods or logs, or vehicular accidents.
Among those who meet with accidents in construction sites, many suffer from spinal injuries. As the workers remain bedridden, another person needs to become a caretaker, which means that two persons lose their incomes.
Six years ago, Ram Nivas Palet, a resident of Kalaiya-13, broke his back while constructing a building. A daily wage worker, he has now been restricted to a wheelchair.
In January, Ram Bahadur Lama, a resident of Sunawal in Nawalparasi, came under a wall he was breaking. He has become paralysed waist down since the accident.
According to institutions working in the construction sector, workers meet with accidents as they do not take safety precautions. According to Naranath Luitel, president of the Central Union of Painters, Plumbers, Electrician and Construction Workers (CUPPEC), contractors and workers are careless about safety precautions, leading to such accidents.
“We have been raising our voices for the safety of workers at their workplaces,” he said, adding, “But there is little awareness that workers need to wear boots, hard hats, harnesses, electrical gloves, etc. Even those who provide the work do not seem to care about the safety of the workers.”
Whose responsibility is it?
In 2074, Bharat Sharma died of electric shock while constructing the roof of a building. In Magh this year, another cook died of electric shock while working at a party palace in Hetauda. They got the electric shock because of negligence and lack of safety precautions at the workplace. The workers did not know of ways to save themselves from electric shock, nor had they used any such materials.
Labour Act 2017 provides safety and health rights at the workplace. Clause 85 of the Act mandates that it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure safety at the workplace.
Nir Bahadur Shrestha, Rapti Municipality-4, Bhawanipur.
Similarly, Clause 69 of Paragraph-12 provides that employers should ensure a safe work environment and provide enough personal safety materials to the workers. However, the provisions of the Act fail to translate into action.
The Act has mandated the Department of Labour and Occupational Safety to ensure guaranteeing of the safety of workers at workplaces. According to Uma Kanta Acharya, the work of spreading awareness about work-related safety is going on.
“The idea of Labour Act implementation is to create awareness, enhance safety sensitivity, and advocacy,” Acharya said. This department, bifurcated from the Department of Labour and Employment, has 11 offices of Labour and Employment, but they are of little use. Of the 11 offices, six are busy with work related to foreign employment, said Acharya. He conceded that the task of monitoring and training labourers remains unfulfilled due to a lack of human resources.
According to Pradip Acharya, general secretary of the Construction and Allied Workers Union of Nepal (CAWUN), although construction companies have started to become sensitive about the safety of workers at the workplace, the safety protocol remains to be followed in the informal sector. “The labourers themselves do not want to wear safety gear,” Acharya said.
Nir Bahadur Shrestha, 31, a resident of Bhawanipur in Rapti Municipality-1, lives in a one-room, tin-roofed tenement. This is the share of the property he received from his parents. He dreamt of building a more comfortable residence when he earned money.
However, an incident on Chaitra 30, 2077, took away his dreams. He was returning home after working to build a ward office for Rapti Municipality-11. The tractor he travelled in met with an accident when it was headed from Thakaltar to Chiunde Khola. Nir Bahadur was injured and stayed in a hospital for six months. He returned home as a paralytic man four months ago. He needs support even to go to the toilet.
Tanka Bahadur Shrestha, a ward member, said, “He was the best mason in the village. He had been sustaining his family through labour work. But sadly, the poor fellow met with an accident.”
After Nir Bahadur’s accident, his wife, Mira, has been working as a labourer to sustain the family. “If I do not work, we will have a hand-to-mouth problem. But when I go to work, my family remains neglected,” Meera said, adding, “It’s pretty tough for us to sustain our lives.”
According to District Police Office, Chitwan, Khadak Lama (35), Magan Mahato (40), Chhaniya Mahato (50), Sitaram Shrestha (45), and Surya Bahadur Shrestha were killed, while 19 others had been injured in the accident.
According to Iman Singh Lama, the then deputy mayor of the municipality, the municipality had spent Rs5 million towards the treatment of the injured; it had given Rs5 lakh per family of the deceased.
The contractor, Shrikhandapur Nirman Sewa, spent only Rs4 lakh on treating the injured. “The accident had occurred within the municipality, so the municipality helped them as the victims were locals,” Lama said.
Twenty workers were killed when a tipper truck met with an accident at Syangoche in Damodarkunda Rural Municipality-3 on 22 Asar 2078. The workers building the Beni-Jomsom-Korala road section were mainly in the 20-30 age group. The government provided compensation of Rs5 lakh each to the deceased’s family, while the sons of a dead couple are taken care of by relatives.
“We make attempts to support workers in coordination with their employers when the former do not receive their salaries or meet with accidents. We are fighting against the tradition of deceiving workers.”
– Naranath Luitel
President, CUPPEC, Nepal
According to Acharya, the general secretary of CAWUN, workers have been losing their lives in great numbers because employers are not serious about the safety of the workers.
“There is a tradition of looking down upon workers,” Acharya said. “Little attention is paid to the safe journey of the workers. Had there been a better driver and a vehicle, so many workers would not have lost their lives.”
Injuries abound
What is the number of workers employed in the informal sector? What is the number of those who are killed or injured? What are the kinds and numbers of accidents at the workplace? How are the injured workers treated? There are many such questions whose answers the government and concerned institutions do not know.
In 2018, CAWUN Nepal, CUPPEC Nepal and All Nepal Workers Union conducted a study in 30 districts and estimated the number of workers in the construction sector to be 2 million. According to Acharya, the secretary-general of CAWUN Nepal, as per media reports about accidents at workplaces and the data available at CAWUN Nepal, CUPPEC Nepal and Nepal Workers Union, 10 percent of workers became injured. As per this data, the number of workers that meet with accidents stands at twenty thousand.
“This is not the number of the seriously injured,” Acharya said. “Most of them recover after minimal treatment while a small number of the workers fall seriously ill. Our research shows that 250 workers die of accidents at the workplace each year.” Acharya, however, conceded that there is hardly any data on the workers who lose limbs in accidents.
According to the data at CUPPEC Nepal, between 2062 and 2072, a total of 138 workers died in accidents, whereas ten others lost their limbs. Out of them had been killed in one year between 2070 Falgun and 2072 Chait.
Since CUPPEC Nepal keeps only the record of those who have come into contact with it, the number of the dead and the deceased could be three times the number mentioned by CUPEC Nepal, said Nara Nath Luintel, the chairperson. “The data we keep is incomplete. The real number could be much more,” he said.
Similarly, as per CUPPEC Nepal’s data, 110 workers were killed in workplace accidents six years between 2072 and June 2022.
CUPPEC Nepal is an organisation of workers affiliated with CPN-UML, whereas CAWUN is that of workers affiliated with the Nepali Congress. All Nepal Workers Union is close to Maoist Centre. The leaders of these organisations, which claim to advocate for the rights of workers affiliated with them, face criticism for using these organisations to lift their political careers. However, Luitel, the chairperson of CUPPEC Nepal, said, “We make attempts to support workers in coordination with their employers when the former do not receive their salaries or meet with accidents. We are fighting against the tradition of deceiving workers.”
Compensation hard to come by
It is difficult for workers in the construction sector to receive their compensation in case of accidents. This leads to the families of the deceased having difficulty sustaining their lives while the injured cannot even get proper treatment.
According to Luintel, the chairperson of CUPPEC Nepal, the number of construction sector workers with insurance coverage is extremely low. When a worker dies or is injured in an accident, the employer hardly ever pays compensation. “We often resort to protests to ensure that the victims receive compensation. We have failed to make people understand that insurance coverage for accidents benefits both the employers and the workers,” he said.
Bhairav Raut of Champaran Bihar, who fell and died while building a house.
Since the workers in the informal sector do not have insurance cover, they have difficulty sustaining their lives after accidents. According to Luintel, although construction firms have started insuring their workers after the Labour Act-2017, the number of those getting insurance coverage is too low.
According to Ravi Singh, president of the Federation of Construction Associations of Nepal, workers’ safety should be included right from the invitation for tender. Although the issue of the health and safety of workers is mentioned in the contract in infrastructure development projects that receive support from Asian Development Bank and World Bank, other projects do not consider the issue of safety of workers as a primary concern.
“We demand that government contracts should also include workers’ health and safety concerns,” Singh said. “There has been some improvement so far; it is too slow.”
Although the invitations for tender issued by government agencies make it mandatory to follow safety protocols, it is unclear what kinds of safety protocols are to be followed. According to Singh, keeping the safety of the workers in focus also helps decrease the construction sector’s costs. Singh believes that workers’ safety should be made mandatory even for construction firms that specialise in private homes and residential complexes. According to Singh, the issue of workers’ safety should be included during the registration of the blueprint of a building under construction and should be followed strictly.
There is also a need to train workers, contractors and supervisors about the need to follow safety protocols and use safety gear while working in the construction sector.
Pushkar Chaudhary is an example of a worker who had to run from pillar to post to get treatment expenses after an accident. When he met with an accident on Magh 8, his employer, Jeevan Bhattarai, took him to Nepalgunj for treatment. But when Chaudhary had to be admitted to Bir Hospital in Kathmandu for further treatment, Bhattarai distanced himself from Chaudhary.
When various institutions working in the construction sector started pressurising Bhattarai, he gave some money to Chaudhary, said Soniya, Chaudhary’s wife. At CUPPEC’s request, the hospital provided a free ICU bed to Chaudhary.
According to Lal Bahadur Patel, central vice-president of the All Nepal Security Workers Union their organisation pressurises employers to compensate their workers in case of accidents. “We have even collected funds to provide treatment to the workers,” Patel said.
According to Patel, it had been tough to get compensation for a worker’s family who was when the wall he was dismantling fell on him. “After pressure, the employer paid a compensation of Rs1.5 lakh. Another Rs50,000 was raised from the market,” Patel said.
Pradip Acharya, the association’s general secretary, recounts how difficult it had been to provide compensation to the family of a dead worker eleven years ago. According to Acharya, the workers had to protest and stop work for ten days to ensure compensation. “Even in formal sectors, when it comes to paying compensation, the management gives higher priority to financial matters and lesser priority to deaths,” Acharya said, adding, “It is not possible to provide compensation based on protests and pressures. Compensation should be made mandatory in the law itself,” Acharya said.
According to Acharya, the problem is more significant in the case of workers working in heavy-duty sectors such as roads, bridges, irrigation canals, electricity, plumbing and painting
Clause 55 of the Labour Act 2017 makes it mandatory to insure workers against accidents. The employer must purchase insurance amounting to a minimum of Rs7 lakh. If the worker is killed or becomes physically or mentally destabilised, they or an authorised person receives the total amount of compensation.
Organisations working in the construction sector pressurise employers to provide compensation to workers based on this provision of the Act. However, the Act does not address daily wage workers.
According to Patel, insurance cannot address the issue of daily wage workers because they keep changing their workplaces frequently.
Even if the employer and the workers use safety gear while working and attempt to keep the workplace safe, the loss can be reduced significantly, said Patel. So it is necessary, Patel said, to train daily wage workers about safety protocol and usage of safety gear.
For Umakanta Acharya, director-general of the Department of Labour and Occupational Safety, the professional unions of the workers have failed to work for the workers, bring together all the workers, and maintain a balance between trade union and management. “The trade unions have not been effective because they have been used as ladders for political gain and to respond to the issues of workers based on political leaning,” Acharya said. The union has created a well-off class in the name of workers, and that class has failed to represent the workers, Acharya added.
Although the Act related to Labour is per the international standard set by International Labor Organization and Nepal’s constitution, the trade unions have failed to function as they have been divided politically, said Acharya.
Pradip Acharya, general secretary of CAWUN Nepal, told the Centre for Investigative Nepal that the government does not have any policy regarding the welfare of workers. “How many workers have died of workplace accidents? How many have been injured? Government agencies have no such data,” Acharya said, adding, “There is a need to establish a help desk at the local level along with the participation of the workers.
