Challenges Facing Waste Management Workers in Ghana (64809)

Session Information: Cyberspace & Technology
Session Chair: Brian Sinclair

Saturday, January 7, 2023 (09:00)
Session: Session 1
Room: 318B
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation

All presentation times are UTC-10 (Pacific/Honolulu)

Waste management is one of urgent challenges in the world. In rapidly growing cities of developing countries like Accra, Ghana, waste collection is done without sufficient protection of workers. This situation became worse when the COVID-19 pandemic began to threaten the health and safety of waste collection workers. This paper aims to examine waste management workers’ safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana. To better understand waste management workers’ safety concerns during the pandemic, we used the questionnaire survey. Our questionnaire survey was conducted among 60 waste management workers in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. The study then discusses how municipal waste management authorities can ensure safety of waste management workers during the pandemic. This means that they were exposed to a higher risk of infection and injury. Our results showed that 58% of the respondents were worried about the COVID-19 pandemic while 20% was not even sure of the existence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides their worry, we also found that about 40% of the respondents had access to face masks/shields at their workplace and 30% had hand sanitizers. Concerning the availability of safety protocols at the workplace, our results suggested that 54% of the respondents applied hand sanitizer after each collection on field, 20% 5-6 times, 13% 3-4 times. The respondents somewhat followed COVID-19 safety protocols. However, we also pointed that 46% of the respondents did not sanitize after each collection for some reason. This paper highlights that providing more advanced safety protocols in terms of workers daily operations and safety measures will enable a safe working environment for the workers even in terms of future pandemics.

Authors:
Julius Mensah-akoto, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Kenichi Matsui, University of Tsukuba, Japan


About the Presenter(s)
Mr Julius Mensah-Akoto is a University Doctoral Student at University of tsukuba in Japan

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Posted by Clive Staples Lewis

Last updated: 2023-02-23 23:45:00