Number of employees working in inadequate labour conditions is on rise

The number of employees working in inadequate labour conditions, not complying with the hygienic-sanitary norms increased with approximately 4% in 2012, comparing to 2011, reaching the number of 49 thousand of affected persons, Gheorghe Burbulea, Chief of the Labour Trade Unions Inspectorate, declared Wednesday, July 17, 2013, within the meeting of the Confederate Committee.   

According to him, the index of 8% reached in 2012 from the total number of employees, which activate in working conditions not complying with the hygienic-sanitary norms, represents the apogee. But the real situation, which is not stated by the Statistics Bureau, is more dramatic, the index constituting 25-28%, as in CIS countries.

„It is not possible to have decent work conditions without an adequate financing of this domain. During the last year, for the implementation of the protection and prevention measures, for the units with a personnel of more than 20 employees, there were spent near 240 million lei, which constitute approximately 1 % of the country’s remuneration fund or 400 lei annually for an employee”, Burbulea mentioned.

The Chief of the Labour Inspectorate considers that in the result of verifications it was found out that the majority of economic agents switched off the heating, conditioning, inflow and ventilation systems or even disassembled them for scrap metal.

According to Burbulea,  „this alarming situation is also caused by the lack of integral normative framework for the implementation of provisions of the Law on security and labour health. Although the law provides the evaluation of the professional risk factors, the Methodology of execution, evidence, liquidation or their diminishing, was not elaborated and approved till now”.

Oleg Budza, Chairman of NCTUM, states that „the employer closes his eyes and let his employees work in inadequate and unhealthy work conditions. It is very serious that the real number of employees activating in inadequate hygienic-sanitary labour conditions, is not shown by statistics”.

„The trade unions will further make all possible in order to improve the situation of this domain. Till now, we succeeded to reduce by 30% the number of cases when the employees are accused by the employers of labour accidents. But, both the government authorities and the employers must understand that in order to integrate in the European Union, we must firstly pay a major attention to the employees’ health and their labour security”, declared the NCTUM’s Chairman.

In 2012 there were registered 425 labour accidents, 32 of which were fatal and 62 – serious.

The Trade Unions Informational Centre