A Qualitative Study of Personal Protection Equipment Compliance among Palm Oil Workers in Asahan District, The Province of North Sumatra, Indonesia

Abstract

Compliance of personal protection equipment has still occupational health problem. Even though the function of personal protection equipment could reduce work accident between palm oil workers and lack of compliance using personal protection equipment due to personal preference might lead to unsafe condition. Many studies reported compliance of using personal protection equipment caused work accident among workers but there is limited study reported these issues in qualitative methods. This research aims to explore the reasoning of lack of compliance using personal protection equipment among palm oil workers. A qualitative study was conducted in this research and six informants had been interviewed about availability, reward and punishment, supervision and frequency using personal protection equipment. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Low of compliance to used personal protection equipment among palm oil workers was reported in this study. Lack of knowledge and limited personal protection equipment might be the reason of palm oil worker that haven't wear personal protection equipment. The informant stated that supervision could improve their compliance using personal protection equipment. Additional reward and punishment might improve palm oil worker compliance to using personal protection equipment. Increasing palm oil worker on personal protection equipment training would decline work accident prevalence and would reduce risk of unsafe behavior.