Occupational Safety Culture of Workers at Shop Floor in Medium Scale Iron and Steel Industries of Punjab State in India: Development of Safety Index

Abstract

Safety Index has been considered as an important quantitative method used to track safety changes, ranking a problem and also helps in facilitating the decision-making process. The main objective of this research was to develop a new safety index for the workers of medium scale manufacturing industries of Punjab using Delphi method with involvement of means and weights of the factors. To check the validity of the factors content validity index (CVI) was used, by taking expert opinion. The reliability of safety index was also examined by the analysis of data collected from 30 medium scale iron and steel manufacturing industries of Punjab, 10 workers were selected from each industry in order to fill the questionnaire. After calculating the results the standard value of safety index was found to be equal to 21.02 and the analysis of survey data suggested that all the 30 medium scale industries were below the standards of safety index. It means very less safety measures are maintained in the industries of Punjab and the working environment is found to be dangerous and unsafe for the workers of these industries. The main reason behind this scenario is the lack of knowledge among the workers and the greed of owners who don’t want to spend money on maintaining the safety measures. It is recommended to management of industries to improve or maintain their safety factors, so that the workers should feel safe and comfortable at the workplace.