CONSTRUCTION DEATHS. By Ernesto R. Zárate, FPIA ANOTHER ACCIDENT HAS OCCURRED causing the deaths of four construction workers. When will the ever learn… as the song goes…. I witnessed a grisly accident not too long ago, with my own two eyes. I watched a laborer slip from an unbalanced hanging scaffold and fall seven stories down to the concrete pavement of the third floor. They were cleaning the exterior walls of the condominium building across our unit when one of the ropes of their hanging platform loosened, toppling it over. The victim vainly tried to hang on to one of the ropes but failed. His companion was able to save himself by holding on to the other rope. Not a single one of those workers had any safety belts on them. The poor guy died. God bless his soul. That was all one can say. But if I ever get to meet the contractor or the engineer in charge, heaven help me for what can happen. The very least he would get from me would be a vituperative dressing-down that he would remember all his life. Why is it that despite the increase in the construction of high-rise structures, there is still no correlative slowdown in construction related deaths? Every so often we see horrifying photographs and videos of mangled bodies in the newspapers and TV newscasts. And what we hear or see are just the ones that have been reported to the authorities or chanced upon by the media. We know very well that there may possibly be many more that we do not know about. Why is there a breakdown of safety controls in our industry? Have we thrown all safety precautions out of the window and become suicidal because of our seemingly unsolvable problems? The National Building Code is quite specific about safety standards that have to be met during construction. It is just a matter of implementing these provisos religiously. Or is there a need to review them and put more teeth to the law or identify who should be responsible for them? Japanese standards of safety are very rigid. A Japanese Safety Engineer has even the authority to stop construction altogether if he perceives any danger to the life and limb of the workmen. We do have our own Safety Engineers too. And quite capable, one might add. It is just that they are often given other assignments in the course of construction that their authority is dissipated and become more concerned about their auxiliary duties rather than looking after the safety of the workers. As the Commander-in-Chief, so to speak, of a building under construction, it is incumbent upon the Architect to pay special attention to this aspect in the jobsite which is of utmost importance—a matter of life and death. We should insist, nay, demand that the stringiest safeguards be undertaken for the safety of construction workers. Insurance agencies may well be able to quantify the peso value of a human life but no one human being can ever be able to put any price on the grave loss to a victim’s family nor on the myriad other “could have beens” had the workman lived. This was not the first time that such an accident happened in the same building. While it was still under construction about twenty years ago, a workman doing the washout veneer of the building also fell to his death witnessed by our workmen who were then putting up the rides at Payanig sa Pasig. These people still haven’t learned their lesson, it seems. When will they ever? Until another death occurs? It is clear that most of these construction deaths are caused by accidental falls. That brings up the question: How much does a safety belt cost… Five hundred pesos? A thousand pesos? Ten Thousand pesos? But should one care about the cost if a human life is at stake? There is no human life that can be considered dispensable. No matter if the workman is an ordinary peon or laborer like the poor guy I saw who fell to his death. We cannot play God. We cannot just consider these construction deaths as mere statistics. We have to act positively to prevent them from occurring. Now. It is our moral duty.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:45:05 +0000