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is its first year of operation and the year is not yet over, the
legislation has on the whole worked well and has had a higher degree of
social acceptance than I would have expected so soon. There are
however some ambiguities in the legislation that have come to light in
practice, and if Your Excellency-in-Council accepts some minor amendments,
I would propose to seek enactment of these in this Council before the
end of the year.
Regulations to provide for workers' safety in the use of
electricity and to control fire safety in industry are also in the course
of preparation. The former will be a relatively simple code based on the
United Kingdom Factories Acts' Electricity Regulations and will cover insulation, circuit protection, wiring connections and earthings of
electrical equipment in industrial undertakings. The latter will codify
the present fire safety requirements to enable better understanding of
them by factory proprictors and more effective enforcement of them in
appropriate cases by the factory inspectorate to complement the work of
the Fire Services in this field.
The Labour Advisory Board has been consulted on all these
items and has agreed that they should be proceeded with.
With regard to workmen's compensation, the Working Party
that was set up in February this year to review the Ordinance
comprehensively has nearly finished its task and will be submitting its
report to me next month. I understand that its main recommendations are
likely to include :
(a)
the extension of the coverage of the Ordinance to all
employees;
/(b) ...