48,000 die yearly due to occupational accidents in India: Study

The council observed that as many as 38 fatal accidents take place every day in the construction sector in India.

Mumbai: Nearly 48,000 workers die in the country due to occupational accidents, of which the construction sector contributes 24.20 per cent of the fatalities, says an international report.

Quoting the International Labour Organisation numbers, the British Safety Council, today said 48,0000 people on average die in the country per annum due to work-related hazards.

The British Safety Council is a not-for-profit workplace health, safety and environmental management organisation, also noted that the workplace deaths in India is 20 times higher than in Britain.

It observed that as many as 38 fatal accidents take place every day in the construction sector in the country, while there were only 137 fatal incidents in all sectors in 2016 in Britain.

"India with 1.25 billion population has a strong workforce of 465 million. However, only 20 per cent of them are covered under the existing health and safety legal framework.

"Though there are laws to address these health and safety concerns, their implementation is a big task due to lack of adequate manpower," British Safety Council chief executive Mike Robinson said today, adding there is one factory inspector for 506 registered factories here.

Noting that India is in a similar position to where Britain was 50 years ago in terms of the accident rates of work and enforcement of legislation, he said, "we see huge parallels to where Britain was 50-60 years ago to India today.

"We know that the work we do and the education and training that we provide can hopefully have a similar effect of what we had in Britain but in lot less than 50 years."

The council, which has been providing its products and services here for the last 30 years, today opened its India office in the city and has tied up with Chennai-headquartered NIST Institute.

It now aims to offer its full range of products like audit, training, e-learning, qualifications and membership in the Indian market.

"Initially, we only looked for a local organisation, which would allow us to deliver our products across the country, as we start to build our own delivery capabilities. However, in NIST we've found an organisation that has a largely complementary set of products and services as we have," he said.