Safety and Health in Construction in East Africa

SECTOR successfully established a process of tripartite social dialogue in construction in Tanzania, whose partners have been active in discussing problems of the sector and proposing solutions, leading to concrete activities. Such partners decided to concentrate on the theme of safety and health in such industrial sector. The process has entailed a comprehensive approach to safety and health in the sector, ranging from policy advise to procurement regulations and to training of the different partners in the construction industry to comply with the new regulations.
During the implementation of the aforementioned activities in Tanzania, it became clear that other countries in the region - namely Kenya and Uganda - were also in great need of improving their health and safety conditions in construction. They would benefit from learning from the Tanzania experience, and at the same time, such construction-related work could pave the ground for the newly-discussed National OHS Plans of Uganda and Kenya (promoted by SAFEWORK).
Following, an RBTC project was launched, including a training workshop in Kampala and follow-up activities at the country level in Kenya and Uganda with seed-funding from SECTOR.
The objectives were: (a) to share and benefit from the Tanzania experience; (b) to review the current status of OSH in the sector in each of the three countries and to propose priority areas for action within the individual countries and the region to raise the standard of OSH in the sector; (c) to explore synergies among the countries.