Starting this year, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) will conduct mandatory occupational health and safety training in workplaces.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III the new policy of their department aims to enhance workplace health and safety, and ease the burden on micro, small and medium businesses amid the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In his recent directive to the Occupational Safety and Health Center (OSHC), Bello stressed the need to ensure the health and safety of the workers and employees to boost productivity as the economy reopens gradually.
“We are waiving the training fees being charged to micro and small businesses. The workers in those enterprises have to be assured of their safety and health while at the workplace. This is a big factor to their productivity, and is also a form of assistance to our MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) being hardest hit by the restrictions due to the pandemic,” he explained.
Under the OSH law (RA 11058) it is mandatory to designate and train safety officers in all business firms depending on the number of their employees. The OSHC fixes the training fee at P5,500 per trainee.
DOLE said “providing safety seminars and training to workers is an empowering way of building and sustaining a preventive occupational safety and health culture” among business enterprises.