Underlying Factors of Occupational Accidents: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

An average of 80 thousand occupational accidents occurs each year in Turkey and 1500 workers are lost their lives. In accordance to “policy of preventive approach”, many legal arrangements have been made in Turkey. In this context, weight to issues such as risk assessment and preventive OHS services is given; however, employee training, employee participation, labour inspect, and periodic checks in working areas such as maintenance and audit have not been achieved. The level of implementation of legal arrangements was inadequate. Research was carried out to determine the significance rate of the factors that cause accidents in 5 sectors with the highest number of occupational accidents in Turkey. Questionnaires administered to experienced safety specialists were reviewed by analyzing with the fuzzy TOPSIS method. According to the results, especially in the construction and coal mining sectors and all sectors in general, employee training, employee participation and periodic maintenance in the workplace are more important accident prevention factors than risk assessment and preventive OH & S services. It is seen that for the prevention of accidents, all measures should be implemented by systematic and by a multidisciplinary approach.