Occupational Safety & Health (Part V) cont’d…
TOPIC: INQUEST IN CASE OF DEATH BY ACCIDENT OR OCCUPATIONAL DISEASE.
Power of Minister to make regulations
THE SECOND part of regulations outlined under the foregoing sub-head states the following:
(a ) The classes of workplace for which and circumstances under which a committee shall consist of more than six persons and in each ease prescribing the number of persons;

(b) the employers or workplaces or classes thereof for the purposes of Section 23 (1) (b);

(c) exempting any workplace, industry, activity, business, work, trade, occupation, profession, employer or any class thereof from the application of Section 23(2);

(d) the conditions for eligibility, qualifications, selection and term of committee members, and the operation of the committee;

(e) regulating or prohibiting the installation or use of any machine, device or article or any class thereof;

(f) requiring that any equipment, machine, device, or article used bear the seal of approval of an organization designated by the regulations to test and approve the equipment, machine, device, or article and designating organizations for such purposes;

(g) the classes of employers who shall establish and maintain a medical surveillance programme in which workers may volunteer or participate;

(h) medical surveillance programmes;

(i) the reporting by physicians and others of workers affected by any chemical, physical agent, or biological agent or combination thereof;

(j) regulating or prohibiting atmospheric conditions to which any worker may be exposed in a workplace;

(k) the methods, standards or procedures for determining the amount, concentration or level of any atmospheric condition or any chemical, physical agent, or biological agent or combination thereof in a workplace;

(l) any chemical, physical agent, or biological agent or combination thereof as a critical substance;

(m) prohibiting, regulating, restricting, limiting or controlling the handling of, exposure to, or the use and disposal of any critical substance;

(n ) adopting by reference, in whole or in part, with such changes as the Minister, considers necessary, any code or standard and requiring compliance with any code or standard that is so adopted;

(o) adopting by reference any criteria or guide in relation to the exposure of a worker to any chemical, physical agent, or biological agent or combination thereof;

(p) enabling the Authority by notice in writing to designate that any part of a construction site shall be an individual construction site for the purposes of this Act and the regulations and prescribing to whom notice shall be given;

(q) permitting the Minister to approve laboratories for the purpose of carrying out and performing sampling, analyses, tests and examinations, and requiring that sampling, analysis, examinations and tests be carried out and performed in a laboratory approved by the Minister;

(r) the registration of employers of workers;

(s) the establishment, equipment operation and maintenance of mine rescue stations, as the Minister may direct and for entire payment of the cost thereof and the recovery of such cost from the mining industry;

(t) the training programmes that employers shall provide;

(u) the floor plans for the purposes of Section 61(7);

(v) the forms and notices and providing for their use under this Act;

(w) building standards for industrial establishments;

(x) the name or description of any chemical as a hazardous chemical, any biological agent as a hazardous biological agent, and any physical agent as a hazardous physical agent;

(y) prohibiting an employer from altering a label on a hazardous chemical in prescribed circumstances;

(z) the criteria to be used by the Commissioner to determine whether information is confidential business information in an application under Section 67(1);
The third part of regulations outlined under this sub-head states the following:
(a) Requiring an employer to disclose to such persons as may be prescribed the source of toxicological data used by the employer to prepare a chemical safety data sheet;

(b) the format and contents of a chemical safety data sheet;

(c) the intervals at which a safety and health representative or a committee member designated under Section 23(18) shall inspect all or part of a workplace;

(d) the medical examinations and tests that a worker is required to undergo to ensure that the workers health will not affect his ability to perform his job in a manner that might endanger others in keeping with Section 47(1 )(a);

(e) carrying into effect the provisions of Part VII and declaring certain diseases to be occupational disease for the purposes of this Act;

(f) any provision with respect to the payment of any fixed fine in order to discharge any liability to conviction for the purposes of Section 30(12);

(g) the threshold quantity of a given hazardous substance or category of substances which, if exceeded, identifies a major hazard installation;

(h) any provision with respect to the levy to defray expenses of administering this Act for the purposes of Section 39;

(i) all other matters which the Minister may consider to be in anyway incidental to, connected with or conducive to the discharge of the provisions of this Act.
Section 75 (3) of the Act states: No young person shall be employed in a factory otherwise than in accordance with regulations made under this section.
Penalty for breach of regulations: Section 76 of the Act states: There may be annexed to the breach of any regulation made under this Act such penalty not exceeding fifty thousand dollars as may be prescribed and such penalty may be sued for and recovered under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts.

*The writer is the former General Secretary of the Clerical & Commercial Workers’ Union (CCWU) and also a former President of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) and a former Vice President of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC). He served the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL) as Research Officer 1983 – 1998.