Chart 1. Median bar-chart of the type of labour in the projects.
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During the survey the respondents were asked about their programs for training the labour. The findings show that the percentage frequencies of the companies training programs were: 26.5% of the companies had specific training courses and programs for their labour, and 73.5% declared that there were no specific training courses or programs in this regard. According to the declaration of respondents, the most important company training programs were professional short-time courses on the site, sending some of the labour to TVTO construction industries training centres, and providing supervisors to train some of the labour during the construction.
The question that might be raised is why the companies did not have any integrated training program for their workers. According to the respondents, some of the fundamental problems and barriers in order to have integrated training programs for the staff and workers are as follows: high expenses of construction training courses, financial problems, short-term contracts of the workers, large number and various types of construction learning points, low level of labour education, lack of incentive among the workers for training, inadequate relations between the contractor or client and the labour, little attention from the client on the importance of skilled labour in projects, and time-consuming. On the other hand, some of the barriers in training labour referred to the personal problems of the labour themselves. Some of the crucial problems of the Iranian workers are low level of education, low income, lack of motivation, and family struggles. These barriers play an important role in inhibiting their training and learning. Regarding Pie-Chart 2, most of the respondents believed that more than one of these items affected the training of labour. It shows 26.8% of the respondents believed that the low level of education of the labour force is the most important barrier to train them. Also, low income by 25%, no motivation (21.4%), and family struggles (17%) were the other important barriers according to the respondents’ views. In addition, some of the respondents mentioned other problems and barriers in training labour such as low culture, inadequate obligation to train labour on the government’s part, and low control by the government ones the use of skilled or unskilled labour in projects. Unfortunately, the incomes of the workers are low and most of them have populous families with high expenditures. For this reason, they faced lots of family problems such as fostering and educating their children, exercise and recreation, and addiction. 源Z自-751+文/论^文]网[www.751com.cn All the above mentioned barriers caused the companies not to be able to play an important role in training labour.
Chart 2. Percentage frequency of barriers on training of the labour.
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9. Research question two
9.1. Is there any damage to the construction projects in Mashhad because of using unskilled labour?
From 1978 to 1990 after the earthquakes in Tabass (1978), Ghaen (1980), Golbaf (1981) and Manjil (1990), the damaged cities and villages were reconstructed with different policies and engineering designs [55], [8] and [4]. However, in the two cases of Golbaf and Ghaen, the re-occurrence of earthquakes in May 1997 and March 1998, respectively, was an actual test and engineering evaluation of these reconstructions. As it was expected, these tests showed different responses. In the case of Ghaen, after the earthquake, the majority of housing units and schools were totally destroyed due to a magnitude of 6.6 earthquake and created sorrowful scenes. Poor workmanship and lack of supervision and quality control caused the tragedy. In an overall evaluation, the reconstruction of Ghaen was a failure and was the main cause of the large number of casualties during the earthquake of 1997 [1] and [4]. In the case of Golbaf (500 km west of Ghaen), the experience was quite different. All of the reconstructed buildings after the 1981 earthquake remained with minor damages in the 1991 earthquake. Owing to the good quality of reconstructed buildings, 1500 deaths in 1981 were reduced to five people in 1991, even considering that the earthquake happened at night, when most people were at homes. The design of the reconstructed units in Golbaf was similar to those of Ghaen. The positive differences in Golbaf were due to good workmanship, supervision, and people’s consciousness of the dire need to build safer structures [1], [56] and [57]. In the case of Bam earthquake (December 26, 2003, magnitude 6.6), many steel and concrete structured buildings were destroyed because of lack of skilled and expert workers [8].