The government has been urged to as matter of urgency, pass the Occupational Safety and Health Bill and strictly enforce all relevant environmental laws to ensure the safety of all workers in Ghana.

Professor Emmanuel Adinyira, a Professor of Construction Project Management at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), who made the call, also advocated for the relevant enforcement agencies such as the Department of Factories Inspectorate, the Labour Department and the Environmental Protection Authority, to be adequately resourced.

“As seen with the poor management of our environment, having the right laws alone is simply not enough.

We have the Environmental Protection Act, the Water Resources Commission Act, Hazardous Electronic Waste Control and Management Act, and the Community Water and Sanitation Agency Act, yet, we see nothing in our management in Ghana.

We should pass the bill and enforce the laws and the government must prioritize resourcing these agencies if we are going to make any serious headway in the fight against the worsening Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) performance”, he argued.

Professor Adinyira gave these recommendations at his Professorial Inaugural Lecture held at the KNUST, where he delivered on the topic “Beyond the Fence: Transferring Health Safety, and Environment (HSE) Knowledge from Construction Sites to Host Communities”.

Delving into what the issues were, he indicated that HSE challenges were significant hindrances to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Ghana has made limited progress towards achieving 41.1 percent of the SDG targets, with a worsening performance observed across 26 percent of the targets (Sachs et al., 2024).

The contamination of our water and soil with heavy metals due to galamsey and other practices, the potential ban on exporting our crops due to traces of these heavy metals, pressure on our healthcare facilities due to accidents, environmental pollutions with impacts that will outlive our children’s children, and the cost of treating water and managing waste, means that HSE has direct impact on our local and national economy as well as our very survival”, he stated.

On part of construction, Prof Adinyira pointed out that a significant and often overlooked challenge was the knowledge gap between contractors in the formal sector and their host communities regarding HSE practices.

While first-class contractors in the formal sector operated with technical expertise, regulatory frameworks, and industry standards, the surrounding communities- those living closest to the risks created by the contractors’ activities – often lack even basic HSE awareness.

Contractors possessed the tools, training, and technical expertise to protect life and the environment.

According to him, this knowledge remained confined within site boundaries, benefiting only the workforce, while the surrounding communities remained vulnerable to hazards they did not create nor fully understand.

He proposed that contractors must not only employ workers from their host communities for their skills or workforce, but should also intentionally aim to utilize them as agents to spread HSE knowledge beyond the fence.

Specifically, construction business owners must review their HSE policies to include not just their company’s needs and the health and safety of their workforce, but also the well-being of their host communities

Academia, industry, and government must reimagine construction as a platform for empowerment, not just physical development, he added.