Worker awareness of workmen’s compensation in the Sri Lankan construction industry

Abstract

Work-related injuries and illnesses are common in the construction industry, which can lead to deaths, injuries or disabilities (temporary or permanent) to the workers and Workmen’s Compensation Ordinance (WCO), deal specifically with employment injuries. There is no mandatory insurance clause in the WCO that requires employers to be insured against Worker injury risks. However, insurance companies offer Workmen’s Compensation Insurance (WCI) policies to cover workmen’s compensation liabilities and employer may opt to insure his liability at his own discretion. The aim of this research is to identify the awareness of Workmen’s Compensation (WC) among Workers in the construction industry. This research has been carried out through literature review and data collected from a preliminary interview, questionnaire survey followed with semi structured interviews. Research findings show that most workers have a poor awareness about WC; therefore, benefaction from WC to the workers has to be improved. The main reasons for this matter is that the Workers are not retaining under same employer for long time duration and there are no awareness programs in the construction sites about WC. In order to overcome this issue, mainly safety officers can comprise short seminars about WC once in four months in the monthly meetings and safety officers should come across as an intermediary to make sure that the workmen’s compensation process is being carried out as required in the site.