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Occupational Hazards Among Hawkers
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The concentration of women in micro-enterprises with diverse
methods of operations makes it more important to address the gender
dimension in health and safety at workplace. Healthy and safe work
environments can enhance, and are synonymous with quality jobs and
output (Muir, 1974; Alli, 2001). It is envisaged that quality outputs
would impact on women's earnings and might keep them in employment.
Thus, attention must be paid to the health and safety of the jobs that
women do.
However, men and women are not the same neither is their
jobs and the working conditions they are exposed to the same. Likewise,
the ways they are treated in the society also differ. These factors can
affect the hazards they face at work and the approach that needs to be
taken to assess and control them. Women are always at the receiving end
of most social and economic hazards (National Population Commission and
USAID, 2004) and street trading is not an exception.
"A hawker can be
defined as a person who offers goods for sale to the public without
having a permanent built-up structure from which to sell" (Asiedu, Ag
yei-Mensah, 2008 Pg1). Street hawking exposes the individual to the risk
of potential accidents, loss of lives, abuse, reproductive health
problems, easy prey to crime and prostitution as well as a number of
other social problems. In addition, street hawkers retard national
growth because they cannot be taxed to provide revenue for the
government, impede traffic, increase travel time and fuel costs thus
increasing transportation costs and the average costs of dory business
(Davis, 2008). In addition, hawkers operate in unsafe public spaces
where they have to man oeuvre between cars and motors to make their
living at the risk of losing their lives and at the mercy of the
weather, crime amongst other factors.
Street hawking is therefore, a
negation of the international convention on the rights of the child. It
is indeed inhuman for anyone to engage a child in money¬ making venture.
Such a child is denied basic education which is another reign of every
child. Hence, child labour refers to the ill-treatment of a child by his
parents or any other adult. Edu and Edu (2009) describe child abuse as a
willful maltreatment of a child. Such maltreatment according to them
(In include acts of commission (abuse) and omission (neglect).
A
narrow definition of child abuse is limited to life-threatening physical
violence, including severe beatings, bums and strangulation which are
inflicted on children by the adult members of the community. A broader
definition however, lays emphasis on any treatment other than the most
favourable care, and includes neglect, sexual or emotional abuse and
exploitation. Whichever way, child abuse is the flagrant abuse of
children's God-given and constitution-guaranteed freedom, comfort and
peace, by adults in the society.
Therefore, this study examines occupational hazards affecting hawkers along Lagos-Badagry Expressway.
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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---
