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Measuring Safety Climate in General Cargo Terminal Operation in Three Major Seaports in Nigeria

Udoh, Godwin S., Owuama C. O., Njoku Paul C.

Abstract

Safety climate has been defined as a summary of molar perceptions that employees share about their work environment. This research is aimed at determining the perception and attitude of workers towards health and safety in general cargo terminal operations. The study populations were all workers of a major terminal operator operating in a major seaport in Nigeria with three operational bases. Safety climate was assessed by the use of questionnaires and interviews. Two hundred and ninety-six (296) questionnaires were administered to workers in the three operational bases of the terminal operator while five semi-structured interviews were also conducted in one of the bases in an attempt to elaborate on the findings from the survey. Nine safety climate factors: Management commitment, supervisors’ safety, communication, training and competence, coworkers’ safety, job pressure, accident/nearmiss investigation and reporting, health and safety procedures/instructions and perception of risk were used to measure the safety climate of the workers. The findings of the research revealed positive response from both the respondents and the interviewees. One-way ANOVA results showed that the operational bases mean scores does not differ significantly from each other at 0.05 confidence level, indicating that the operational bases have the same safety climate level. The perceived safety performance mean scores of the operational bases differed significantly from each other at 0.05 confidence level after one-way ANOVA was conducted, hence more analysis which is subject to further research needs to be done to ascertain how the perceived safety performance mean scores of the three operational bases differ significantly from each other. To establish a relationship between the safety climate scores and the safety performance scores of the respondents based on their operational bases, a t-Test was conducted which returned no significant differences at 0.05 level of confidence, which proves that there is a relationship between safety climate factors and safety performance factors in all the operational bases.

Keywords

Safetyseaportclimatecargo terminalaccident frequency

References

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