More Safety Tips You Should Heed

This is the continuation of the previous posting on safety in and around construction. At the break-neck speed the city and our country is developing, there are construction sites all over the country. Like it or not, dangers from construction sites affect us even without us knowing. You are advised to read the earlier post here.

In the second part of our installment, we list out more safety points when you are near construction sites.

Whenever you see trailers on the road transporting construction materials like concrete precast drains or, steel bars or girders, always give way and do not follow closely. If you need to overtake, stay two lanes away. We know this sounds like basic driving advice, but every week we see all these horrifying accidents on the road and in the papers involving these long, dangerous vehicles. Most of the time, it’s the innocent motorists and passers-by that pay the price. We once knew this contractor that send out heavy steel materials every night from Johor Bahru to Kuala Lumpur via trailers. The journey takes more than 8 hours because the heavy trailers travel very slowly in the dead of the night. And more often than not, the poor drivers work for days with minimal rest and sleep, so…

Whenever there is building work going on, there is also a threat of dengue. Even if your neighbour is doing a small renovation work or a huge highrise construction, as long as there is stagnant water, mosquitoes will breed. In large construction sites where workers stay in kongsi, dengue is quite common, and most of the time unaccounted for. If at any time, you feel that mosquitoes are breeding in a site near your house or office, alert the Department of Health or the local council.

Recently another case made the front page of a local newspaper, where some shopowners were complaining about the tower crane from a nearby high rise construction site swings over their premises. While the JKKP investigates the matter, at any time should you never walk or pass under a moving crane, be it a tower crane or a mobile crane. If a case like this one occurs (radius of tower crane exceeds limit of construction site), alert the local council.