Appraising Safety Performance, Occupational Hazards and Environmental Conditions in Plastic Industries in Jeddah Industrial Estate - Saudi Arabia

a

CHAPTER- I
INTRODUCTION

1.1. INTRODUCTION
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has made tremendous progress in the socio-economic sphere in recent years, where the economy has been developed and diversified rapidly, and the population has good chances for personal economic development. By the end of 1423 H (2003G) there has been 8.3 million employees in the all economic activity sectors and the number of licensed producing factories arrived to 3601 factories employing 0.34 million workers, where considerable annual increase of the number of workers has been observed, particularly in Riyadh, Makkah and Eastern provinces. Also, 12 industrial estates have been established in the different cities and towns.

These developments have their impact on the practice of safety and occupational health since:
  (a) diversification of economic activity from nearly complete dependence on oil production to a wide spectrum of industries, particularly the basic chemical industries (by SABIC), as well as agriculture, construction and services, involving more manual processing , use of potentially toxic chemicals and exposure to other chemical hazards, requiring more stringent appraisal of safety of the industrial operations and monitoring of the work environment and workers’ health;
  (b) the rapid increase in the type and size of new industrial activities requires a similar increase in adequate safeguards of workers’ health, mostly through the development of occupational safety, environment and health; and
  (c) the expected change in composition of workers from largely expatriate to mainly Saudi Arabian should facilitate the follow-up of exposed workers, which is at present difficult because of the rapid turnover and the spread of geographical location from which the expatriate workers are drown.
Meanwhile, some governmental and non-governmental bodies contribute to the overall provision of occupational safety and health. However, the functions, operational... [continues]

Read full essay