Exigency of OSHA Standards Concerning Indian Telecom Riggers

Introduction

Riggers, “persons handle work at heights” are heros of the wireless communication era, without whom no new telecom tower infrastructure can be erected or repaired or maintained.

Working on heights is involved with lot of stress (Khavanin A et al 2018) as well there is a correlation between safety attitudes and occupational stress among tower climbers (Malakuoti J et al 2017). Rigger’s work on telecom towers is risk prone in nature (S.M.Rosu et al. 2015) and this occupation needs occupational licensing (Michael S Landa 2008). There are studies about cell tower radiation, RF safety, realisation of compliance distance (Michael R Neurent, 2012, Richa C et al. 2014) and few studies on effect of Cellular Tower Radiation towards Human Tissues, (Tapasy Rabeya et al. 2020). Telecom networks are being shared among different Telecom Service Providers mounting multiple antennas / related equipment on a single tower (Choudhary M.A et al. 2009, A Shruti Bharaswaj 2013, Alexander Osei-Owusu et al. 2017) to manage economics or as a new business model leading to more complexity to a rigger to work on telecom towers. Another important point to consider is the Wind pressure on telecom towers which is normally estimated to assess the load bearing capacity of towers at various heights (Kevadkar M.D et al. 2015, C.Preeti et al 2015, Saharsh D. Kurde et al. 2017) but these pressures usually a threat to the riggers who were performing work at heights on telecom towers.