This study feature a quasi-experimental design
conducted among harvesters working in OPPs to the
south of Peninsular Malaysia. Prior to the intervention,
an ergonomic risk assessment has been carried out using
respondents from 12 OPP which fits the criteria of the
study; FFB harvested manually and within early (first to
third) harvesting year (Ng et al., 2013).
The selection of the eligible OPPs was based on the
inclusion criteria primarily the homogeneity of the
workplace and harvesters in terms of exposure to hazards
(i.e., years of employment, working duration, job tasks,
workplace characteristics, work organization). Only
foreign labor specifically the Indonesian male workers
were involved in this study as they made up entirely of
the harvesters in most OPP in this study.
Using the criteria above, only two OPPs were eligible
for this study. The rest of the other OPPs did not meet the
requirement primarily due to unavailable corresponding pair
(as intervention or control group) where the exposure of
hazards were different (i.e., differences in terms of working
hour, rest day, mixture of job tasks beyond harvesting, land
contour and management style).
Both the eligible OPPs were within the same
geographical area with almost similar land contour not
too far apart from each other. In addition, although
managed separately, the management team of both
OPPs were consistently working together holding
various formal and informal meeting together
including activities for the harvesters.
Assigned randomly (using coin toss), one of the
eligible OPP was allocated as Intervention Group (IG)
while the other as Control Group (CG) with 49
participants and 21 participants in respective group who
gave consent to participate in the study. At the end of the
post-intervention, there were only 34 participants and 12
participants remaining in IG and CG respectively at 4th
month followed-up.
The flow diagram of the intervention progress is as
depicted in Fig. 1.