Construction workers remain vulnerable to injury and death as health and safety regulations are not being properly enforced on sites, experts said this week.
In 2024, 6 223 incidents were reported on construction sites in South Africa, including 60 fatal ones, according to the Federated Employers Mutual Assurance Company (FEM). This marked an increase from 5 986 incidents and 48 fatalities the previous year. In 2014, there were 589 incidents reported on construction sites, including 68 fatal accidents.
Accident frequency on sites has stagnated at around 2% in recent years.
Over the 20-year period from 2004 to 2024, the leading cause of fatal construction site accidents was motor vehicles (44.39%), followed by workers being struck by objects or machinery (19.97%) and falls (15.73%). Workers struck by objects was also the leading cause of non-fatal accidents.
These statistics are not a true interpretation of what is happening on the ground because cases often go unreported or mislabeled, Professor John Smallwood of Nelson Mandela University told a panel discussion on the health and safety of construction workers on Thursday.
“These statistics reflect the statistics of the employees insured by the employer … It is likely that the FEM statistics provide a slanted view, so performance in the industry is likely to be worse than reflected in the statistics,” he said.
South Africa’s mean score in a health and safety survey, which was tested against Anglo American’s health and safety journey model, was around 1.65 out of five.
“We tend to focus on compliance, so three and above would have indicated compliance. In essence, the South African construction industry is non-compliant and that is a problem,” Smallwood said.
Joseph Khoza, an internal auditor at WBHO Construction echoed these views, saying that the number of injuries and fatalities at sites was “not adding up.” He had observed cases in which small contractors did not report accidents on their sites, resulting in skewed statistics.
The speakers said “struck by” incidents were most prevalent on sites. These include being hit by a falling object, a swinging or flying object or a moving vehicle .
The main reason for accidents on sites is that “people don’t know what they are doing”, said Smallwood.
“How do you collapse a building? It’s not that difficult to design a column base and columns and beams,” he said.
“The next one is on its way. We just don’t know where — and to what extent.”
He was referring to the George building collapse in May last year in which 34 construction workers lost their lives and many were injured.
An investigation, into the collapse, which was published this year, attributed it to systemic failures at multiple levels, including weak oversight, non-compliance with regulatory standards and mismanagement by both the National Home Builders Registration Council and project personnel. Contributing factors ranged from irregular status upgrades and late enrolment to inspection lapses, poor material quality and safety violations.
Khoza said careless, negligent and incompetent supervisors were also to blame for preventable accidents on site. The “quality of supervisors is diminishing”, he said.
“Health and safety in construction has become a paper exercise,” Smallwood said.
He had undertaken a study which found that there was too much paperwork relative to health and safety in the construction industry.
He emphasised the need for more inspection — not just once before a shift as the construction regulations stipulate — but all day, every day.
While smaller construction sites, such as the George building, need better regulation and surveillance, the bigger contractors are being regulated and sites are being inspected frequently by the department of employment and labour, said Bronwyn Grenz, construction site safety practitioner.
Training and educating construction workers, as well as supervisors, about risks on site is the key to preventing accidents, said Sanjay Munnoo, chief business development officer at FEM.
Weak oversight and non-compliance are causing fatal accidents at construction sites
