Abstract:
Many scholars indicated that the occupational accidents rate for foreign workers is higher than for domestic
workers in Malaysia. In 2015, a total of 140 Malaysia construction workers have suffered fatal injuries,
consisting of 47 locals and 93 foreigners and these statistics show that the number of foreign workers who
were killed was 2 times more than the number of local workers who died. This paper will therefore aim to
promote a better understanding of the role of health and safety practices through identification of the
challenges among foreign workers in Malaysian construction industry. The main study to which this paper
relates actually adopts a mixed approach for empirical data collection. Whereas this paper is entirely based
on secondary data collated through an extensive critical literature review. Findings of this paper provides
a general overview of the health and safety challenges faced by foreign workers such as human-rights
related problems, difficulty of applying working permit, communication barriers, compensation and
insurance scheme, equal treatment, working environment and accommodation issues in Malaysian
construction industry which has the potential to lead the relevant authorities such as policy makers and
governmental officials in taking necessary steps to improve the safety practices among the local and foreign
workers.
