Notices of Accidents, Dangerous Occurrences and Diseases
Chapter Forty-Four
Syllabus topic 3.1, "Concept, definitions, registrations and Duties of Employer and Employee"
Pages 314 to 318 of 597
In one line
Three things must be reported: an accident that kills or keeps a worker off for forty-eight hours, a dangerous occurrence whether or not anybody is hurt, and a listed occupational disease, which the treating doctor must report too.
In exam wording: section 10 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 requires notice of an accident causing death or preventing the injured person from working for forty-eight hours or more; section 11 requires notice of a dangerous occurrence whether or not it causes injury; and section 12 requires the employer, and separately the qualified medical practitioner attending, to report a disease specified in the Third Schedule.
Why the law has these at all
Because safety regulation runs on information, and the person who has it is the person least keen to share it.
The three sections between them close three different gaps.
Section 10 catches the accident that has already hurt somebody. But it does not catch every scratch, and the forty-eight hour line is where the Code draws it.
Section 11 catches the near miss. A scaffold that collapses at night injures nobody and tells you everything about the site. So the section applies to a dangerous occurrence whether causing any bodily injury or disability, or not. Without it, an establishment could have a series of warnings and report none of them.
Section 12 catches the slow harm. An occupational disease has no moment of accident, and by the time it is diagnosed the worker is often no longer there. So the Code does something it does nowhere else: it puts the duty on the doctor as well as the employer, and penalises the doctor for not doing it.
Some words this chapter uses
Dangerous occurrence is an event of a kind the appropriate Government prescribes which signals serious risk, whether or not anyone is hurt. Qualified medical practitioner is a person registered to practise medicine. Chief Inspector-cum-Facilitator is the senior officer under Chapter IX. Third Schedule to this Code lists the notifiable diseases. Agent and manager, in relation to a mine, are defined in section 2(1)(c) and section 67.
Section 10: notice of an accident
Section 10(1), the trigger and who must report. Where at any place in an establishment an accident occurs which:
- causes death; or
- causes any bodily injury by reason of which the person injured is prevented from working for a period of forty-eight hours or more immediately following the accident; or
- is of such nature as the appropriate Government prescribes,
then notice shall be sent to the prescribed authorities, in the prescribed manner and within the prescribed time, by:
| Clause | The establishment is | Who reports |
|---|---|---|
| (a) | a mine | the employer, owner, agent or manager referred to in section 67 |
| (b) | a factory, or relates to dock work | the employer or manager |
| (c) | a plantation, an establishment relating to building or other construction work, or any other establishment | the employer |
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