Dubai Municipality is launching a positive global initiative to raise the level of safety on the construction sites in the emirate and provide a safe and stimulating environment for workers because they have an important role in the development process taking place in the emirate.

"The initiative, called ‘Zero Accident Construction Challenge,’ is in line with the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to achieve the vision of becoming the world's best city for living and working, and to enhance the prestige of Dubai as one of the cities in which the construction sector is active and plays an important role as an essential component of the economic development system," said Dawood Abdulrahman Al Hajiri, Director-General of Dubai Municipality.

He said the idea of the initiative is to create a challenge for the contracting companies to compete with each other to achieve the largest number of working hours on the construction sites without any accidents or violations of the requirements of security and safety and protect life and property, according to innovative standards and mechanisms of work by applying the provisions contained in the Dubai Municipality Building Safety Practice Manual.

The municipality has been keen on implementing the highest international standards to provide the highest grades of safety and security as well as public health standards for building a happy and sustainable city, Al Hajiri added.

"The municipality will work together as a team side by side with its partners in the category of contractors to promote the concept of positive safety and to strengthen self-control by construction contractors, rather than conducting inspection visits and imposing sanctions. We will encourage contractors to take all preventive and precautionary measures to protect workers and secure construction sites. We will also instruct companies to use training methodologies and educate workers according to the nature of their work and the needs of the construction projects," he said.

Al Hajiri noted that the municipality currently oversees approximately 22,000 buildings under construction coming up at an area of approximately 561 million square feet.

Abdullah Al Shezawi, Director of Building Control Department, explained that the duration of the challenge will be six months starting from 1st October until the end of March next year.

"The participating contractors will intensify the auditing operations and train their manpower and will use the latest technologies and equipment to complete working hours without accidents. In return, the municipality will hold a number of activities and programmes associated with introducing the initiative in order to achieve its objectives, in addition to intensifying the visits of the Building Control Department teams on all the construction sites in the emirate to provide guidance and direction to the engineering and technical staff of the contracting companies.

"The winning companies will be honoured on World Labour Day, which falls on 1st May and a number of incentives and privileges will be presented to them in recognition of their efforts and cooperation," Al Shezawi said, urging all construction companies with more than 30 workers to participate in this challenge, which reflects the positive thinking of the municipality.