Browsing by Author "Stephens, Daniel Kofi"

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    An assessment of occupational health and safety uptake among artisanal miners in Ghana.
    (KNUST, 2016-09) Stephens, Daniel Kofi
    Artisanal mining has attracted global significance because of its potential to contribute to sustainable livelihoods. Also, artisanal mining is one of the most complex economic sectors of Ghana, but the clear understanding of the country‘s Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management in this mining business is missing. This calls for the need for studies in the area so that the findings could be used to inform policy makers in the sector to help enhance the occupational health and safety practices uptake in the sector. Data was collected from one hundred and thirty participants using questionnaires and this was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences(SPSS). It was found that most of the workers who engage in artisanal mining business activities in Ghana are males with just little participation being females. Also, people from the age range between 1 to 35 years are those who actively engage in artisanal mining in Ghana. Physical hazards, psychosocial hazards and ergonomic hazards were found to be among the common and most frequently occurring occupational health and safety issues in the Ghanaian artisanal mining business sector. It was also discovered that management commitment is negatively related to occupational health and safety practices. It was recommended based on the findings that steps must be taken by the Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources to determine efficient and effective measures aimed at identifying all the artisanal miners in the various locations across the country. This would particularly be very helpful to both the Ministry of Finance and Ghana Revenue Authority to rake in additional unreported revenue from these artisanal miners.