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Occupational Hazards Among Hawkers
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CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Street
hawking, which is the act of selling retail goods directly on busy city
streets is a major phenomenon in developing countries. In most African
cites the problem is especially acute, and Lagos, the Nigerian
commercial capital is no exception. Street hawking arises primarily
because of rural-urban migration, unemployment, and the increasing
number of school dropouts; It serves as a source of livelihood and in
addition, an avenue also, to supplement family income. Rural poor youth
moving into the city in search of non-existent jobs fail to find
employment because of lack of education and employable skills.
They end up as street hawkers selling wares on major city streets (Asiedu, et al 2008).
Deaths,
accidents and infections from the workplace have been contributing
immensely to the global mortality rate. Annual death toll from unsafe
occupation reported for 2006 was 1.1 million people. The recorded cases
of fatalities in the workplace that led to complete disability was about
300,000 out of 250 million while over 160 million people were victims
of work-related diseases (Ilo, 2006; WHO, 2006; llo, 2008; WHO, 2010)
Generally,
both women and men are found concentrated in certain occupation, face
similar conditions at work and experience the same workplace hazards.
In
Sub-Saharan Africa region, working women are also traditionally
responsible for the household chores. However, both sexes are physically
different and women are more sensitive considering their reproductive
roles. Gender variations are difficult to specify especially for a
low-income economy. The global figures for 2008 show that out of 337
million occupational accidents, 358,000 were confined as fatal, while
deaths from occupational related illness were 651,000 (WHO, 2010; ILO,
2006; ILO, 2008; Lu, 2(11). Observation from these data show that there
is almost 77 percent increase in death toll from unsafe workplace
between 2006 and 2008, 35 percent increase between the same period while
the number of fatal accident increased by 19 percent.
Women make up
45% of the employed population in the EU (European Union for Safety and
Health at Work, 2012), they constitute about 31.2 percent of Nigeria
labour force (Eweama, 2009; National Bureau of Statistics (NBS1 2010).
Across the Eastern, Middle, Western and Southern Africa regions, about
37, 25, 22 and 2 percent of girls respectively in age between 10 and 14
were economically active in the year 1990 (ILO, 1990; Bledsoe &Cohen
1993). The proportion in the next older age (15-19 years) was 62, 39,
45 and 29 percent respectively in the same year (ILO, 1990; Bledsoe
& Cohen, 1993).
In Nigeria, the proportion of women in labour
force is unfavorably compared to the men. A change in this paradigm as
currently been driven by gender equality agenda (including equal
employment opportunities and support for women enterprises that were
enshrined in MDG 3 (UN, 2003; NPC & USAID, 2004; Oyekanmi, 2008;
Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, 2008) can only be
successfully achieved with the provision of safe working environment for
women.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This research project tends to examine Occupational Hazards among Hawkers in Pen Cinema Area of Agege, Lagos State.Survey design was employed with the use of a well structured questionnaire. Respondents were selected based on simple random sampling technique. Sample size of One Hundred (100) respondents were selected from the staff of 7up Bottling Company Plc.Three hypotheses were formulated and tested with the use of Chi-Square analysis. The analysis resulted to rejecting all null hypotheses an ... Continue reading---
