Smallholder Farmer’s Knowledge, Perception and Attitude on Occupational Hazard and Safety at Dumki Sub-District of Bangladesh

Md. Tariqul Islam^1, , Mawya Siddeqa² and AKM Abdul Ahad Biswas²

¹Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Disaster Management, Patuakhali Science and Technology University, Dumki, Patuakhali-8602, Bangladesh

²Department of Geo Information Science and Earth Observation, Faculty of Disaster Management, Patuakhali Science and Technology University, Dumki, Patuakhali-8602, Bangladesh

Cite this paper:
Md. Tariqul Islam, Mawya Siddeqa and AKM Abdul Ahad Biswas. Smallholder Farmer’s Knowledge, Perception and Attitude on Occupational Hazard and Safety at Dumki Sub-District of Bangladesh. Journal of Sociology and Anthropology. 2018; 2(1):21-26. doi: 10.12691/jsa-2-1-4

Abstract

Agriculture farmer have enormous occupational risk in rural area of Bangladesh. Dumki upazila is a coastal region of Bangladesh where about 85% population directly or indirectly is related to agriculture for livelihood. This study focuses on to identify the farmer’s perception on occupational hazard and safety issue, their knowledge, attitude, perception on occupation hazard and safety with investigate whether or not significant differences exist based on selected personal and demographic variables. Both primary and secondary data has been collected from different sources to fulfill the objectives. The results of this study indicated that the occupational hazards includes noise, machinery, skin disease, animal bite, sting etc. but the farmers have no scope for hazard safety – only the indigenous technology are applied to save themselves like local hat, covering leg at rainy season by cloth or poly-thin etc. Farmers have very poor knowledge on occupational hazard and safety. The only focusing issues are their indigenous knowledge gained by inheritably but lack of modern techniques and health policy. Significant result shows on farmer’s age, cultivation period, education level. Farmer’s knowledge, perception and attitude differ on different demographic condition-age, sex, education, farm size, farming year. This study focuses on betterment of farmer’s occupational health by taking proper policy and legislation both in local and national level.

Keywords:
knowledge perception attitude occupational health and safety small-scale farmers Dumki

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