XN000022-1996-12-04 — Page 9

The Occupational Safety and Health Bill contains the following main

provisions:

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

(i)

Part I specifies the title of the Bill and defines certain terms used in it. Part II prescribes the general responsibilities of employers and occupiers of premises. The employers are responsible for ensuring the safety and health of their employees at work. Occupiers of premises, where persons working there are not their employees, are also responsible for ensuring the safety and health of those employees.

Part III enables the Commissioner for Labour to issue improvement notices and suspension notices. It also confers a right of appeal by the employers or occupiers, against the issue of a suspension notice, to the Commissioner for Labour and the Administrative Appeal Board. Part IV provides for the reporting of accidents resulting in death or incapacity, and dangerous occurrences at the workplaces, by the proprietors, the notification by medical practitioners of cases of occupational disease, and the holding of informal and formal inquires into accidents by the Commissioner for Labour.

Part V provides for the appointment and functions of public officers to administer the Bill's provisions.

Part VI prescribes miscellaneous offences, such as the disclosure of the identities of complainants; interference with or misuse of equipment for safety and health at the workplace.

Part VII sets out the procedure for prosecuting offences under the Bill. Part VIII empowers the Commissioner for Labour to make regulations to supplement the Bill's provisions, to issue, amend and revoke workplace codes of practice, and to amend schedules to the Bill.

Part IX provides for the provisions of the Bill to prevail over any possible inconsistent provisions in the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance, and make consequential amendments to the Administrative Appeal Board Ordinance.

The Occupational Safety and Health Bill, being basically an enabling legislation, should have no major impact on the employers. We intend to introduce subsidiary regulations under the Bill in three stages, so that employers and employees can adjust themselves gradually and comply with the law progressively. As the first stage, we propose that the Occupational Safety and Health Regulation, which provides control over the safety, health and welfare of the workplace in general, and manual handling operations in particular, should be made as soon as the Bill is enacted.