One of the first things many visitors notice about Thailand is that all the construction workers – putting in ten hour days in 38 degree heat – wear long-sleeve shirts, gloves, full-face masks and wide brimmed hats. It often confuses the pasty tourist, already dripping with sweat after strolling a few hundred feet out of their air-conned hotel lobby. The reason: dark skin is considered ugly here in Asia, and therefore, white skin is very desirable, like one ridiculous ad I saw in which a girl used light reflecting off her skin to signal a boat at sea. The reasoning behind the parka-clad construction workers is that working in the sun is a sure sign to get uglier – better to sweat than get a tan (this is likely a holdover from days of yore, when the aristocratic class did no menial labor, and therefore were never outside in the sun).
But the other thing that many people notice is the apparent disregard for workplace safety on nearly every construction site. Construction work – at least on major hotels and by large, reputable companies – is usually carried out with the same amount of OHSO concern that you’d find in any western country… but not always. Walking around Bangkok, you’re likely to see guys who are welding rebar wearing two pairs of sunglasses, hammering away at a cement block without any goggles, standing barefoot and knee-deep in sewage while fixing a manhole, operating a huge cement cutter while wearing flip-flops… things like that. A few days ago I looked out my apartment window and couldn’t believe what I saw, so I took the photo below.
“Safety rope? Don’t worry about it, just look at all the convenient things I can choose to grab on to if I fall.”
I live on the 16th floor, and the floor above me is having some renovations done. These guys were outside hammering on something. If you look closely you can see that the guy on the right is, in fact, tethered to the building, but with a single rope, probably tied around his belt buckle. The platform he’s standing on looks very questionable; even the guy on the left has enough sense to keep one leg slung over the windowsill, just in case.
Still… it’s not as bad as when I was in Laos, and saw a guy dangling off the side of a five story building to hammer something on the wall. He was holding on to a rope tied to his wrist, which was being held by four or five of his colleagues on the roof.
yea, it is kind of strange to see these country folk out in the wretched countryside heat decked in sweaters, scarfs and beanies as if a blizzard had stormed in–just as strange to learn that umbrellas main purpose here is to to block out the sun more than rain.
Regarding Safety, the construction site is not the only scene in this country where Safety is neglected. The roads (traffic and infrastructure i.e. power lines), national parks, and particularly public transport, where over-capacity is quite common to make to stretch that margin by mere pennies.
Good ol’ Thailand 🙂
Yo ! Great set of pics – its really amazing isn’t it ! Oh I forget ‘Amazing Thailand’ 🙂