Occupational Safety, Health and Welfare Act

This provision gives the Act its short title: the Occupational Safety, Health and Welfare Act.

This section defines key terms used in the Act.

This section defines “workplace” and lists types of premises that count as a workplace for the Act.

This Act applies to all workplaces, unless the Act expressly provides otherwise.

The Act also applies to Government workplaces, Government building and engineering works, and Government employment involving people demolishing, painting, or renovating buildings.

The Director must keep a register of workplaces and enter any particulars he considers necessary or desirable for workplaces that must be registered under the Act.

A workplace must not be occupied or used unless the person holds the required registration certificate or current provisional registration permit, and a registered workplace must only be used for activities authorized by that certificate or permit.

People planning workplace-related building work must submit plans to the Director, and local authorities must not approve such plans unless the Director says the building is suitable.

To register a workplace, the occupier or intended occupier must apply to the Director in the prescribed form, include the required plans, and later renew the registration yearly; unauthorized alterations and use of unregistered premises as a workplace are prohibited.

If a substantial change happens after an application is submitted, the occupier must promptly notify the Director in writing.

If a workplace transfer happens, the transferee (or someone acting for them) must immediately give the Director written notice and pay the prescribed transfer fee.

The Minister may make regulations setting fees for workplace registration, renewal, transfer, and duplicate registration certificates.

Employers must keep employees safe and healthy at work and, in some cases, prepare and share a written workplace safety policy.

Employers and self-employed persons must run their undertakings so that non-employees affected by them are not exposed to safety or health risks, and must give prescribed safety or health information in prescribed cases and manner.

People who control covered non-domestic workplace premises, access routes, or plant/equipment/substances must take reasonable steps to keep them safe and free from health risks.

People controlling premises must use the best practicable means to prevent harmful emissions and make any emitted noxious or offensive substances harmless.

This section requires employers and other workplace product suppliers or installers to make articles and substances safe, test them as needed, and provide adequate safety information.

Employees at a workplace must take reasonable care for their own and others’ safety and health, and cooperate with employers or other persons as needed to carry out duties under the Act.

No person may intentionally or recklessly interfere with or misuse safeguards provided under this Act for health, safety, or welfare.

Employers must not charge employees for things done or provided under this Act.

Employers must establish a safety committee in workplaces with more than 50 employees, or where the Director directs it based on the nature of the undertaking.

Workplaces must be kept clean and free of certain effluvia, and the Director can vary or disapply these cleanliness rules by Gazette notice in some cases.

Workplaces must not be overcrowded during work, workrooms must meet minimum space and height standards, and inspectors or the Director can trigger exceptions or notices.

Workplaces must provide fresh air, adequate ventilation, and temperature controls that protect workers’ health.

Workplaces must provide sufficient, suitable lighting and keep relevant windows and skylights clean and unobstructed as far as practicable.

Where a workplace process can make the floor wet and the wet can be drained away, effective drainage and disposal measures must be provided and kept in place.

Occupiers must provide sanitary conveniences for workers and keep them clean, lit, and suitably separated by sex when required.

Occupiers must provide separate, easily accessible washing facilities for male and female employees at workplaces and keep them clean and orderly.

Occupiers must provide clean, potable drinking water at workplaces and keep it accessible, properly stored, renewed daily if not laid on, clearly labelled, and separated from washing facilities.

An occupier must provide suitable change-room storage for employees’ personal clothing and, when protective clothing is supplied, for that protective clothing too. An occupier must not store work-related goods, materials, or waste in any change room.

Occupiers must provide enough seats for employees who usually work standing and must supply chairs with suitable back-rests for employees who usually work sitting.

Occupiers must provide suitable meal facilities for employees, and no one may allow food or drink to be consumed in rooms where poisonous or injurious substances create dust or fumes.

Occupiers must provide and maintain an accessible first aid box or cupboard, keep only first aid items in it, ensure it is supervised by a qualified first aider, post a notice in each workroom, and arrange medical removal for affected employees.

The Director may require medical examinations for certain workers; the employer pays for the examination, and medical practitioners must report specified harmful-substance cases in writing to the Director.

Dangerous machine parts must be securely fenced, unless the text’s safety exceptions apply; the Minister may also make regulations about fencing dangerous moving materials or articles.

This section says certain necessary work on moving machinery can be disregarded when deciding if machinery is safe, but only if the listed conditions are met.

Fencing and other safeguards must be substantial and kept maintained while the covered parts are moving or being used, with limited exceptions.

Hoists and lifts at workplaces must be properly built, maintained, inspected, and marked with load limits; the Director can exempt requirements or issue a prohibition notice.

Workplace escalators must be examined every six months by a competent person, and the examination report must be signed and sent to the Director within 14 days.

Cranes and other lifting machines must be kept in safe condition, inspected regularly, clearly marked with safe working loads, and operated only by trained competent persons.

Occupiers must keep workplace chains, ropes and lifting tackle safe, display or mark safe working loads, avoid overloading, arrange regular examinations, and test equipment before first use unless a manufacturer’s test certificate is kept available.

Steam boilers must be built, fitted, maintained, inspected, and used under safety rules, and some boiler work is restricted until conditions are met.

A steam boiler user must promptly notify the Director in writing before or when certain events happen, including major repairs, permanent cessation of use, transfer, resiting, or damage. No one may modify parts of a steam boiler or steam receiver unless it follows the maker’s instructions and the Director has given prior approval.

For most new steam boilers, the user must give the Chief Inspector specified technical documents. Every new boiler must also be built to acceptable international specifications approved by the Director.

Certain safety rules do not apply to steam tube ovens and steam tube hotplates used for baking or heating food, if the listed maintenance, marking, testing, and display conditions are met.

Steam receivers and steam containers must be built, fitted, maintained, and examined to meet safety requirements, including pressure protection and periodic inspection.

Air receivers must be soundly built, fitted and marked with safety equipment and pressure details, and kept examined and recorded on a regular schedule.

Gas generators, cleaning plants, and storage plants must generally be installed in the open air, unless protected by a shed or structure that meets ventilation, floor-space, spacing, leak-prevention, fuel-storage, and lightning-protection requirements.

Gas cylinders for compressed, dissolved, or liquified gases must meet specified safety and handling requirements.

The Minister may make regulations setting fees for examinations or tests under this Part, and those fees must be paid for each examination or test.

People handling hazardous substances at work must provide information, label substances and containers, use safer application methods where possible, and add special controls for toxic, skin-penetrating, or carcinogenic substances.

Fixed vessels, structures, sumps, or pits holding scalding, corrosive, or poisonous liquids must be covered or fenced, with extra safeguards for ladders, stairs, gangways, and adjoining openings.

Bulk storage of dangerous substances must be at a suitable site approved by the Director, and storage areas and tanks must meet construction, ventilation, containment, and inventory-display requirements.

The section requires explosion-prevention measures for workroom dust, gas, or vapour risks, and lets the Director exempt subsection (3) requirements by written certificate.

Work in confined spaces with dangerous fumes requires safety precautions, and no one may enter unless the listed safety steps are satisfied.

Smoking is prohibited in workplace areas where volatile or inflammable substances are used, and no-smoking notices must be posted there.

Workplaces must provide and maintain fire escapes, keep exits unobstructed, mark escape routes, train workers, and meet extra warning and fire-resisting construction rules in certain buildings.

In workplaces with hazardous exposure or welding, suitable protective clothing and appliances must be provided and maintained at no cost to the employee, as required by the Director.

Workplaces with harmful dust or fumes must use practicable measures to protect workers and keep the dust from building up in workrooms.

In workplaces, workers exposed to eye-risk processes must be protected with goggles or screens, and electric arc welding must be screened to prevent other workers from seeing the arc flash.

Workplaces must reduce ionizing and laser radiation to practicable levels, segregate radioactive work, monitor the working environment, and keep radiation records available for inspection; the Minister may set permissible dose levels.

Workers exposed to non-ionizing radiation must have adequate protection, including eye and face protection for welding, torch cutting, and soldering, and workers with ongoing exposure may need medical surveillance where appropriate.

Workplaces must keep harmful noise and vibration down, and people must not be exposed above the stated sound limits; ear-protection areas must be marked, cordoned off, and restricted to authorized persons using protection.

Workplaces should use mechanical lifting equipment where reasonable and practicable, and workers should not be employed to handle loads that are likely to harm health or safety.

Workers in a workplace must be informed and trained about workplace health hazards and protective measures.

Workplace accidents causing death or disabling injury must be reported in writing to the Director at once, using the prescribed form and particulars.

The Minister may amend the First Schedule by order published in the Gazette, and the section extends the notice rule to the listed classes of occurrences whether or not death or disablement happens.

Workplace occupiers must promptly notify the Director in writing, using the prescribed form, when they suspect or have reasonable grounds to suspect an industrial disease listed in the Second Schedule.

Every workplace must keep certain safety-and-health documents and notices posted in a conspicuous place.

Workplaces must keep a prescribed general register, and the occupier must provide the Director with extracts when the Director requires them.

Registers and records kept under the Act must be preserved and kept available for inspection for at least two years after the last entry.

The Minister may appoint inspectors, and inspectors must carry and produce identity cards when required, keep certain information confidential, and not reveal complaint sources or inspection consequences.

Inspectors may enter, inspect, examine, question, and require documents or assistance at workplaces, while occupiers and others must cooperate and obstruction is an offence.

An inspector may seize and make harmless an article or substance that appears to create imminent danger or serious personal injury, and must then sample it if practicable and file and share a written report.

Inspectors must not disclose information obtained in their duties or reveal complaint sources, except for specified functions, authorized proceedings or inquiries, or with the relevant consent.

An inspector may issue an improvement notice if a person is breaching, or is likely to keep breaching, the Act or regulations, and the person must fix the problem within the time stated in the notice.

An inspector may issue a prohibition notice for activities that pose a risk of serious personal injury, and the activity must stop unless the notice’s concerns are remedied.

Inspectors may add directions to improvement or prohibition notices, but must consult the local fire authority before notices affecting fire escape measures, and may withdraw or extend immediate-effect notices in the stated circumstances.

The Minister must appoint an Arbitration Board, and the Board must regulate its own procedure.

A person served with an improvement notice or prohibition notice may appeal to the Board within 14 days of service.

The Director may issue or revoke certificates and exempt workplaces, and notices of those actions must be published in the Gazette.

This section creates offences for workplace occupiers, owners, employees, and certain company officers who contravene or fail to comply with the Act or regulations.

A person convicted of an offence under this Act with no express penalty faces a fine of K10,000, plus K500 for each day the offence continues after conviction.

If an occupier or owner of a workplace is convicted, the court may order them to fix the contravention within a set time, and late non-compliance can lead to a daily fine of K500.

If a workplace occupier or owner breaches the Act and someone dies or is bodily injured, the occupier or owner is liable to a K20,000 fine and 12 months’ imprisonment.

If an agent, servant, worker, or other person actually caused the act or default for which an occupier or workplace owner is liable, that person is treated as committing the offence and faces the same penalty.

A workplace occupier or owner may avoid liability for an offence if they give notice and prove due diligence and lack of consent, connivance, or wilful default; an inspector may instead proceed against the actual offender.

If someone is substituted for the occupier or owner of a workplace, any order, summons, notice, or proceeding that would have been served on or taken against the occupier or owner is served on or taken against that person instead.

If a machine or implement owner or hirer is not the workplace occupier, that owner or hirer is treated as the occupier for certain offences under the Act.

This section sets evidentiary rules for workplace proceedings, including who must prove certain facts and how some workplace facts are presumed.

This section sets out how documents required or authorized under the Act may be served on a person, firm, or workplace occupier/owner.

An owner or occupier may ask the High Court to change or cancel an agreement if the agreement blocks necessary structural or other alterations needed to comply with the Act or related standards.

The owner or occupier of workplace premises may ask the High Court to divide alteration expenses between them, and the Court may make a just and equitable order or determine the lease.

The Director or any other inspector is protected from liability for actions or omissions done in good faith while exercising powers under this Act.

The Minister may make Regulations to help carry out this Act and to prescribe matters the Act requires to be prescribed.

The Factories Act is repealed, but existing subsidiary legislation can continue if it does not conflict with this Act.