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The SSC organised the seminar “Highlights to Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance & Factories and Industrial Undertakings (Safety Management) Regulation” on 29 October 2020. Mr Dickson Leung, an experienced Occupational Safety Officer from the Labour Department, the HKSAR Government, was invited as the speaker of the seminar.
In the seminar, the two most important pieces of occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation were introduced, namely the Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance (OSHO), and Factories and Industrial Undertakings (Safety Management) Regulation (F&IU(SM)R).
Firstly, Mr Leung briefed the primary purpose of the OSHO. The Ordinance is to ensure the safety and health of employees and to prescribe measures that will make the workplaces of employees safer and healthier. Furthermore, the Ordinance is to improve safety and health standards applicable to certain hazardous process, plant and substances used or kept in workplaces. The ultimate goal is to ensure every employee has a safe and healthy working environment. In enforcing the Ordinance, some workplaces exempted implicitly and explicitly were brought to the attention of the participants.
Another key point of the Ordinance is the main frame of general duties of employers, occupiers and employees. Details and extent of the duty of each party with practical examples were then highlighted to the audience. The general duties are governed by a very important and clearly interpreted phrase: “So far as reasonably practicable”. It is not defined in the Ordinance but it has acquired a quite clear meaning from decided cases in courts.
For the F&IU(SM)R, Mr Leung gave details of the legal requirements about the applicable trades, operation, reporting and record keeping for “safety management system”, “safety audit” and “safety review”. In addition, the requirements of registration and appointment respectively applicable to a registered safety auditor and a safety review officer were clearly explained. As such, we could learn more about how the regulation helps an organisation to operate with a continuous OHS improvement.
The seminar was well attended by over 150 participants. On behalf of the SSC and the Hong Kong Institute of Construction Managers (HKICM), we would like to express our sincere thanks to Mr Leung for delivering such an informative talk.