On October 09th, 2024, the Ministry of Health began soliciting comments on the draft Circular guiding the management of occupational hygiene and employee health (“Draft Circular”). The Draft Circular includes several new provisions as follows:
- Amendment regulations on employee health management dossier (points a and b of Clause 2, Article 4).
Personal health dossier of employees: (i) work in environments exposed to harmful factors causing occupational diseases; and (ii) doing occupations and jobs that are heavy, toxic, dangerous, and especially heavy, toxic, and dangerous according to current regulations of the law, it is mandatory to have a Health Examination Card before work arrangement and a Health Examination Book to detect occupational diseases.
- Supplement new regulations on management of labor environment monitoring activities at labor establishments (Article 2).
– Before conducting labor environmental monitoring at a labor establishment, the Labor Environmental Monitoring Unit must provide notice in writing or via email at least 03 days in advance from the date of monitoring, specifying the time and location of implementation to the Department of Health (the local regulatory authority).
– Employers are encouraged to:
+ Equip automatic labor environmental monitoring devices to proactively monitor several factors with acute toxicity or poisoning risks such as CH4, CO, CO2, NH3, and so on.
+ Implement early measures to improve working conditions when labor environmental monitoring results exceed 70% of the permissible limit or more to protect workers’ health.
- Amendment and supplement to regulations on employer responsibilities (Article 15).
Employers are responsible for carrying out statistics, periodic and irregular reports on employees’ personal health records, labor environmental hygiene records, and employee health management records according to regulations and required by the regulatory authority.
The deadline for soliciting comments on the Draft Circular is expected to end on December 07th, 2024.
