Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2001, published 90th ILC session (2002)

Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No. 155) - Ethiopia (Ratification: 1991)

The Committee refers to its observation. It hopes the Government will be taking or envisaging measures to address all the points that the Committee has been making for some years which concerned the following matters.

Article 1, paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of the Convention. Ensuring adequate occupational safety and health protection to workers in branches of activity excluded by the Labour Proclamation No. 42/1993.

Article 4. The formulation, implementation and periodic review of a coherent national policy on occupational safety and health and the working environment, in consultation with the most representative organizations of employers and workers.

Article 5. The main spheres of action required to be taken account of by the national policy on occupational safety and health and the working environment.

Article 11. Ensuring the progressive carrying out of the following functions by the competent authority or authorities to give effect to the national policy:

(a)  The determination of conditions governing the design, construction and layout of undertakings, the commencement of their operations, major alterations affecting them and changes in their purposes, the safety of technical equipment used at work, as well as the application of procedures defined by the competent authorities.

(b)  The determination of work processes and of substances and agents the exposure to which is to be prohibited, limited or made subject to authorization or control by the competent authority or authorities, and the taking into consideration of health hazards due to the simultaneous exposure to several substances or agents.

(c)  The establishment and application of procedures for the notification of occupational accidents and diseases, by employers and, when appropriate, insurance institutions and others concerned, and the production of annual statistics on occupational accidents and diseases.

(d)  The holding of inquiries, where the cases of occupational accidents and diseases or any other injuries to health arising in the course of or in connection with work, appear to reflect situations which are serious.

Article 12. The measures required to ensure that the obligations of those who design, manufacture, import, provide or transfer machinery, equipment or substances for occupational use, are carried in the specified manner.

Articles 13 and 19(f). The protection from undue consequences of a worker who has removed himself from a work situation which he has reasonable justification to believe presents an imminent and serious danger to life or health. The measure taken to ensure that the employer cannot require workers to return to a work situation where there is continuing imminent and serious danger to life or health.

Article 14. The measures to ensure the inclusion of questions of occupational safety and health and the working environment at all levels of education and training, including higher technical, medical and professional education.

Article 15. The arrangements to ensure the necessary coordination between various authorities and bodies concerned in giving effect to the national policy on occupational safety and health and the working environment, including the establishment of a central body.

Article 17. Measures to ensure the collaboration in applying the provisions of the Convention whenever two or more undertakings engage in activities simultaneously at one workplace.

Article 19(c). The arrangements (rules, codes of practice, instructions, etc.) ensuring that representatives of workers in an undertaking are given adequate information on measures taken by the employer to secure occupational safety and health.

Article 19(e). The arrangements ensuring that workers or their representatives and, as the case may be, their representative organizations in an undertaking, are enabled to enquire into, and are consulted by the employer on, all aspects of occupational safety and health associated with their work, including the possibility, by mutual agreement, to bring in from outside the undertaking, technical advisers.

Article 20. The arrangements ensuring cooperation between management and workers and/or their representatives within the undertaking.

Article 21. The legislative or other provisions ensuring that occupational safety and health measures shall not involve any expenditure for the workers.