Observation (CEACR) - adopted 2008, published 98th ILC session (2009)

Articles 20 and 21 of the Convention. Functioning of the inspection system. Annual report on the work of the inspection services. Noting the statistics provided by the Government in its report for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006, the Committee observes that the data relating to Peninsula Malaysia only indicate the number of inspections carried out, the number of employers reprimanded and the number of employees involved, and that the figures for 2005 and 2006 relating to Sarawak indicate the number of men and women inspectors, the number of workplaces liable to inspection, the number of inspection visits, the number of persons employed in the workplaces visited, the number of prosecutions and the number of industrial accidents reported. No data are provided for Sabah. Such fragmentary data, covering different elements for each of the regions covered, do not offer a global view of the functioning of the inspection system nor, as a consequence, a basis for determining the measures for its improvement.

In reply to the comments that the Committee has been making for many years concerning the failure to publish and communicate to the ILO an annual report on the work of the inspection service, the Government indicates once again that each year a report is prepared by each department of the ministry and that the report of the Department of Occupational Safety and Health has already been published on the Internet. The Committee observes that this report briefly indicates the total number of inspections carried out in factories, installations involving machinery and construction sites for the years 1999–2003, with the exclusion of any data allowing the identification of the categories of workplaces inspected, the legislative fields addressed or the results of inspections, such as the number of violations reported, the action taken on these violations in terms of issuing warnings, the imposition of administrative penalties or prosecutions. The Committee is therefore bound to regret once again that no annual report on the work of the labour inspection services, as required by the Convention, has been communicated to the ILO, despite its reiterated requests. It invites the Government to refer to paragraphs 331 to 333 of its General Survey of 2006 on labour inspection, which emphasize the importance of the availability of such a report so as to be able to assess the operation of the labour inspection system, identify priorities for its improvement and determine the resources that need to be allocated in the context of the national budget. The Government is requested to ensure that the central inspection authority is very soon in a position to collect, based on uniform instructions to the services placed under its authority, information that is as detailed as possible on each of the items covered by clauses (a) to (g) of Article 21 of the Convention, and to include this information in the annual report to be published and communicated to the ILO within the time limits set out in Article 20.

The Committee is also addressing a request directly to the Government on certain points.