Occupational Health and Safety Hazards Analysis by AHP Among Agriculture Workers in Sharjah, UAE

The study investigates workplace safety concerns in the city’s agricultural sector through interviews with occupational health and safety experts. A cross-sectional design is used to enhance data collection from a large group of respondents selected through the convenience sampling approach. A semi-structured interview with occupational safety experts and a structured survey with workers in Sharjah emirate’s agriculture sector is done in this research. Respondents’ feedback is collected through semi-structured interviews through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and evaluated against current health and safety practices in the agricultural sector of Sharjah emirate. The research results indicate that the workers prioritize exposure to heat as the most significant sub-factor of the physical occupational health and safety hazards in the sector. Additionally, roadside crashes are considered the most severe sub-factor of physical threats. The results also indicate that unclean irrigation water is the most significant sub-factor for the biological and chemical hazards. At the same time, poisonous plants are the most severe sub-factors in this category. It is important to provide sufficient awareness and training programs for workers in health and safety topics in order to identify the effects of different hazards within the agriculture sector in Sharjah emirate. Additionally, organizations must be aware of how to implement proper health and safety systems within their workplace in order to protect their workers from the effects of these hazards. Proper Occupational Health and Safety Systems that are specifically designed for the agricultural sector containing details on how to address relevant hazards must be developed and implemented within Sharjah emirate.