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EMPLOYMENT
Registered unions are required by law to keep accurate accounts which must be audited by a person approved by the Registrar, and to forward them to the Registrar within three months of the end of the union's financial year. Unions must also give to the Registrar, before 1st April each year, a return for the 12 months ended 31st December in the previous year showing membership figures, the names and occupations of the principal officers and the name of the auditor.
The 308 unions on the register at the end of 1966 consisted of 240 workers' unions with a total declared membership of 166,933; 54 organizations of merchants or employers with a declared member- ship of 5,925; and 14 mixed organizations with a total declared membership of 9,120.
JJ
SAFETY, HEALTH AND WELFARE
It is the chief function of the Industrial Health Division of the Labour Department to safeguard the health of workers in industry. Hazards to the health of workers are reported either by the statutory notification of occupational diseases, by the factory inspectorate or by officers of the division. Working environment is controlled by environmental and biological monitoring, and the establishment of an industrial hygiene laboratory has greatly facilitated this work.
Environmental monitoring has included the estimation of inor- ganic and organic poisons, explosive gases and dusts in the working atmosphere. Biological monitoring aims at protecting the health of specific groups of workers who, because of the nature of their jobs, are particularly vulnerable. The annual examination of all radiation workers, both in industry and in medical practice, was begun during the year. Surveys, both environmental and biological, figure prominently in the work of the division and have covered such widely differing subjects as medical facilities in factories, lead fume and dust in the printing industry, silicosis among quarry workers, and the investigation of noise leading to loss of hearing. The study of some aspects of air pollution continued, and with more attention being focussed on the need to measure the quantity and nature of pollutants in Hong Kong, another monitoring station was set up. This station is the first of a series planned to measure pollution`on the mainland.