EMPLOYERS and workers of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) will no longer have a reason not to comply with the mandatory occupational health and safety (OSH) training after it was made free by the Department of Labor and Employment.
In a statement, Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said the Occupational Safety and Health Center (OHSC) will no longer charge the P5,500 fee per person for the said training starting this year.
Bello said the measure aims to ensure each workplace will remain Covid-free and productive amid the ongoing novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.
“We are waiving the training fees being charged to micro[-scale] and small[-scale] businesses and those companies in distress. The workers in those enterprises have to be assured of their safety and health while at the workplace,” the labor secretary said. “This is a big factor to their productivity.”
The labor department earlier said most of the training-seminars of the OHSC are now conducted online.
The labor chief said those participating in the OSHC training should not only be free-of-charge for workers but must also be considered compensable working time as stipulated in Republic Act 11058 (Occupational Safety and Health Law).
Violators of the OSH laws could be fined between P10,000 a day to P100,000 a day.
Last year, the labor department reported that 23 percent of the 72,000 companies it inspected failed to initially-comply with OSH standards.
After providing technical assistance and advice to the erring companies, their compliance rate rose to 92 percent, according to the labor department.