The Government of Karnataka on April 25, 2022 has issued the Draft Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Karnataka) Rules, 2021.
The foremost provisions of the draft are as followed:
• Annual Health Examination.- Every employer of factory, building and other construction work, beedi and cigar work, plantation, motor transport undertaking shall arrange to conduct free of cost, medical examination for every worker annually i.e. within 120 days from the commencement of the every calendar year who has completed 45 years of age. The medical examination shall be conducted by a qualified medical practitioner as per proforma in the Form-IX. The Medical Certificate shall be submitted by the qualified medical practitioner to the concerned employer and employee.
• Letter of appointment/Experience certificate.- (1) No employee shall be employed in any establishment unless he has been issued a letter of appointment in FORM X:
Provided that, an employee who has not been issued an appointment letter containing the required particulars, shall be issued an appointment letter within three months of coming into force of this rule.
(2) Every employee shall be issued experience certificate in FORM XI within seven days of cessation of employment in the establishment.
• Duties of Safety Officers.- The duties of Safety Officers shall be to advise and assist the factory management in the fulfilment of its obligations, statutory or otherwise, concerning prevention of personal injuries and maintaining a safe working environment. Those duties shall include the following, namely:-
(i) to advise the concerned departments in planning and organising measures necessary for the effective control of personal injuries;
(ii) to advise on safety aspects in all job studies and to carry out detailed job safety studies of selected jobs;
(iii) to check and evaluate, the effectiveness of the action taken or proposed to be taken to prevent personal injuries;
(iv) to advise the purchase and stores departments in ensuring high quality and availability of personal protective equipment;
(v) to provide advice on matters related to carrying out plant safety inspections;
(vi) to carry out plant safety inspections in order to observe the physical conditions or work and the work practices and procedures followed by workers and to render advice on measures to be adopted for removing the unsafe physical conditions and preventing unsafe action by workers;
(vii) to render advice on matters related to reporting and investigation of industrial accidents and diseases;
(viii) to investigate the cases of industrial diseases contacted and dangerous occurrences reportable under these rules.
(ix) to advise on the maintenance of such records as are necessary relating to accidents, dangerous occurrences and industrial diseases;
(x) to promote setting up of Safety Committees and act as adviser and catalyst to such committees;
(xi) to organise in association with the concerned departments, campaigns, competitions, contests and other activities which will develop and maintain the interest of the workers in establishing and maintaining safe conditions of work and procedure; and
(xii) to design and conducting either independently or in collaboration with the training department, suitable training and educational programmes for the prevention of personal injuries.
• Daily and weekly working hours.- (1) No worker shall be required or allowed to work in an establishment for more than forty eight hours in any week.
(2) The period of work of a worker shall be so arranged that inclusive of his intervals for rest, shall not spread over for more than ten and a half hours in a day.
(3) The period of works of workers shall not exceed five hours and that no worker shall work for more than five hours before he has had an interval for rest of atleast half an hour.
• Weekly day of rest.- (1) For the purpose of section 26, there shall be posted up in a conspicuous place outside the office of every establishment a notice in Kannada and in English or any other language understood by majority of the workers showing the weekly day of rest. Where the weekly day of rest is not the same day for all persons employed in the establishment, the notice shall show the day of rest allowed to each relay, or set of persons or individual.
(2) No adult worker shall be required or allowed to work in an establishment on the weekly day of rest (hereinafter referred to as the said day), unless-
(i) he has or will have a holiday for a whole day on one of the three days immediately before or after the said day, and
(ii)the employer of the establishment has, before the said day or the substituted day under clause (i), whichever is earlier,-
(a) delivered a notice at the office of the Inspector-cum-facilitator of his intention to require the worker to work on the said day and of the day which is to be substituted, and
(b) displayed a notice to that effect in the establishment:
Provided that, no substitution shall be made which will result in any worker working for more than ten days consecutively without a holiday for a whole day.
(1) Notices given under sub-rule(2) may be cancelled by a notice delivered at the office of the Inspector-cum-facilitator and a notice displayed in the establishment not later than the day before the said day or the holiday to be cancelled, whichever is earlier.
(2) Where, in accordance with the provisions of sub-rule (2), any worker works on the said day and has had a holiday on one of the three days immediately before it, that said day shall, for the purpose of calculating his weekly hours of work, be included in the preceding week.
• Compensatory holidays.- (1) Except in the case of worker engaged in any work which for technical reasons must be carried on continuously throughout the day, the compensatory holidays to be allowed under sub- section (3) of section 26 of the Code shall be so spaced that not more than two compensatory holidays are given in one week.
(2) The employer of the establishment shall display, on or before the end of the month in which holidays are lost, a notice in respect of workers allowed compensatory holidays during the following month and of the dates thereof, at the place at which the notice of periods of works prescribed under section 26 is displayed. Any subsequent change in the notice in respect of any compensatory holiday shall be made not less than three days in advance of the date of that holiday.
(3) Any compensatory holiday or holidays to which a worker is entitled shall be given to him before he is discharged or dismissed and shall not be reckoned as part of any period of notice required to be given before discharge or dismissal.
• Extra Wages for overtime.- (1) In pursuance of Section 27 of Code, where in an establishment a worker works for more than nine hours in any day or for more than forty-eight hours in any week, as the case may be, he shall in respect of such overtime work be entitled to wages at the rate of twice the rate of wages and shall be paid at the end of each wage period.
(2) In calculating overtime on any day, a fraction of an hour between 15 to 30 minutes shall be counted as 30 minutes and in case of more than 30 minutes it shall be rounded and shall be counted as an hour on actual basis.
(3) In calculating the wages or earnings in the case of a worker paid by the month, the daily wages shall be 1/26th of his monthly wages; and in the case of any other worker it shall be the daily wages or earnings as the case may be.
(4) The workers may be allowed/required to work for more than the hours stipulated under rule 43, subject to the following conditions, under the following works and circumstances namely;
(i) urgent repairs;
(ii) work in the nature of preparatory or complimentary work;
(iii) work which is necessarily so intermittent that the intervals during which they do not work while on duty ordinarily amount to more than the intervals for rest;
(iv) work which for technical reasons must be carried on continuously;
(v) engaged in making or supplying articles of prime necessity which must be made or supplied every day,
(vi) engaged in a process which cannot be carried on except during fixed seasons;
(vii) engaged in a process which cannot be carried on except at times dependent on the irregular action of natural forces;
(viii) engaged in an engine-rooms or boiler-houses or in attending to power-plant or transmission machinery;
(ix) engaged in process on account of the break-down of machinery;
(x) engaged in the loading or unloading of railway wagons or lorries or trucks;
(xi) exceptional press of work and
(xii) engaged in any work, which is notified by the Central Government in the Official Gazette as a work of national importance;
Conditions:-
(i) the total number of hours of work in any day shall not exceed twelve;
(ii) the spreadover, inclusive of intervals for rest, shall not exceed thirteen hours in any one day;
(iii)the total number of hours of work in any week, including overtime, shall not exceed sixty; and
(iv)no worker shall be allowed to work overtime, for more than seven days at a stretch.
Provided that, the conditions imposed by this rule shall not apply in order to enable a shift worker to work the whole or part of a subsequent shift in the absence of a worker who has failed to report for duty;
The total number of hours of overtime work in any quarter shall not exceed one hundred and twenty five.
Explanation: In this rule "quarter" means a period of three consecutive months beginning on the 1st of January, the 1st of April the 1st of July or the 1st of October.
• Maintenance and production of reports, registers and other records.- Every employer shall-
(a) maintain register of workers, overtime, fine, deduction for damage or loss in Form-XIV electronically and shall be kept available at an office or the nearest convenient building within the precincts of the establishment;
(b) in case of manual registers and other records, all particulars shall be legibly entered in ink in Kannada and either in English or the language understood by a majority of the persons employed be preserved in original for a period of three calendar year’s after the date of the last report or entry;
Provided that, when the original record is lost or destroyed before the expiry of one year period, true copies thereof, if available, shall be preserved for the prescribed period.
(c) The employer shall produce, electronically or by registered post, all the above registers on demand before the Chief Inspector-cum- facilitator or an Inspector-cum-facilitator.
• Return.- Every employer of an establishment shall send electronically annual return in relating to such establishment in Form-XV to the Inspector-cum-facilitator having jurisdiction so as to reach not later than 1st February following the end of each calendar year.
• Register of accident and dangerous occurrences.- Every Employer of an establishment shall maintain the register of accident and dangerous occurrences as required under sub-clause (v) of clause (a) of section 33 of the Code in Form-XVI.
• Register of leave with wages.- (1) Every Employer shall maintain in respect of every employee, thereof a record of leave with wages electronically or manually in Form-XVII.
(2) The register mentioned in sub- rule (1) shall be preserved for a period of two years after the last entry in it and shall not be destroyed even after the expiry of that period unless it has been properly transferred to the new register.
• Duties of the Occupier.- (1) The occupier shall arrange to carry out the safety audit for the following factories:
(i) in which hazardous manufacturing processes which involves use, storage and handling of toxic, highly inflammable, explosives, hazardous chemicals where in such toxic or highly inflammable or explosive substances are likely to be generated or given out or carried out,
(ii) non-hazardous factories employing more than two hundred and fifty workers.
(iii) in which hazardous manufacturing processes as listed in First Schedule of the Code is involved
(iv) in which dangerous processes and operations under rule 104 are carried on.
(2) The occupier shall arrange to carry out the safety audit to as a measure for securing the safety of persons employed therein, in the following manner, namely:-
(a) internally, once in a year by a team of Plant personnel; (b) externally, once in two years by the Safety Auditor,
Provided that, in the year, when an external audit is carried out, it shall not be necessary to carry out an internal audit:
Provided further that, in case of any changes, total or partial, in the manufacturing process, the occupier shall, within one month prior to such change, carry out the safety audit externally by the Safety Auditor.
• Qualification and Criteria of the Contractor.-For the purposes of obtaining license, the contractor as an entity or as an individual shall not be an un-discharged insolvent or convicted any time during the last two years of an offence which is criminal in nature involving offences which are liable for punishment for more than three months of imprisonment.
• Form and manner of application for contractor license.-Every application by a contractor for the grant of a license shall be made on-line electronically through official portal in Form-XX to the licensing authority along with a fee as specified in rule 75.
• Responsibility of contractor.- (1) The rates of wages payable to the workers by the contractor shall not be less than the rates prescribed under the Code on Wages, 2019 (Central Act 29 of 2019).
(2) In case where the worker employed by the contractor perform the same or similar kind of work as the worker directly employed by the principal employer of the establishment, the wage rates, holidays, hours of work and other conditions of service of the workers of the contractor shall be the same as applicable to the workers directly employed by the principal employer of the establishment on the same or similar kind of work. In case of any dispute whether the work is of similar kind, the matter be referred to the Licensing Authority whose decision shall be final.
(3) In other cases the wage rates, holidays, hours of work and conditions of service of the workers of the contractor shall be such as specified under the Code and rules made there under.
(4) All contract labourers shall be made member of EPFO and ESIC subject to applicability as under respective provisions of the Code on Social Security, 2020 (Central Act 36 of 2020).
(5) The contractor shall get his license amended, in case of any change in the number of workers or conditions of work making an application in Form XX online to the licensing authority.
• Responsibility of Payment of wages.- (1)The contractor shall fix the wage periods in respect of which wages shall be payable and no wage period shall exceed one month.
(2) The wages of every person employed as contract labour in an establishment or by a contractor shall be paid before the expiry of seventh day after the last day of the wage period in respect of which the wages are payable.
(3)The wages shall be disbursed only through bank transfer or electronic mode.
Provided newly employed persons may be paid wages in cash upto two months or till opening of bank Account, whichever is earlier.
All the persons likely to be affected there by and notice is hereby given that the said draft will be taken into consideration after forty five days from the date of its publication in the Official Gazette.
Any objection or suggestion, which may be received by the State Government from any person with respect to the said draft before the expiry of the period specified above, will be considered by the State Government. Objections and suggestions may be addressed to the Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Department of Labour, Room No 413, Fourth Floor, Vikasa Soudha, Bengaluru-1.
[Notification No. LD 245 LET 2021]
