Kingpin Milieu of Safety and Occupational Health Hazards-The Unorganized Sector and Women Labourers
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Date
2011
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Abstract
Unorganised sector with its telltale features
of fatiguing job patterns, non-ergonomic work
environments, work overload, mental and physical
stresses, humiliation, insult, harassment, unsafe work
environments, job insecurity and social isolation, render
women labourers in these sectors - the maximum
represented group - vulnerable, physically strained and
mentally/emotionally trapped. They are helpless with
lesser possibility for social security and health insurance.
They live the lives of the victims of destiny and suffer
many occupation impacted distresses including work
related musculo-skeletal disorders (WMSDs), orthopaedic,
gynaecological, pulmonary and skin related diseases.
Women, again, are the victims of multi-tasking as they
bear the responsibilities of the household and the work
spot alike. In both the situations, they emerge the invisible,
but the conspicuous contributors. For these women,
domestic work, perhaps, is yet another unorganized sector
to which they switch over alternately from the work spot.
The cumulative effects of these environments definitely
leave a negative signature in the form of health hazards
and an eternal strife for visibility and identity. This paper
discusses the plight of women labourers in three such
unorganized sectors. The findings focussed that all the
labourers (irrespective of the sector working in) were
prone to WMSDs, Chemical pollutants and ergonomic
problems.