Interventions to Reduce Drudgery of Workers Involved in Small Scale Food Processing Units

Ergonomics in small and medium enterprise food industries are one of the most common issues being neglected among people (Siong et al., 2018). The present study was, therefore, undertaken to design and provide small scale food processing workers, of Punjab state, with ergonomically designed interventions to mitigate their pain and discomfort while working. Workers were provided with an amla de-seeding machine for removing seeds of amla easily, a load carrying trolley for carrying heavy loads within the workplace from one place to another and a low height working table for performing chopping activity in a comfortable posture. Comparative assessment of conventional method and improved technologies was done and experiments were conducted on 10 female workers. Results revealed that the amla de-seeding machine made the work of the workers easier as depicted by the WERA score of 21.2. For majority of the workers (81.8%), removing of seeds with amla de-seeding machine was considered probably safe. For the activity of carrying load from one place to another, the work load of improved method, i.e., carrying load with the help of portable trolley was very light. Also, the ergonomically designed low working table helped in improving the work posture of the respondents while performing chopping activity.