Unannounced Inspection of Fall and Entrapment Safety Management in Small and Medium Workplaces

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] Unannounced site inspections are conducted to prevent accidents such as falls and entrapments that mainly occur at construction sites.

The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA) announced that it will implement 'patrol site inspections' to prevent industrial accident fatalities.

Patrol site inspections involve KOSHA conducting surprise inspections of small and medium-sized workplaces to eradicate major hazard factors such as falls and entrapments.

They check for fall and entrapment accident prevention measures and compliance with mandatory safety protective equipment usage.

KOSHA plans to increase the number of site inspections from 60,000 last year to 70,000 this year and deploy 404 patrol vehicles, 296 more than last year. Inspections to prevent large-scale accidents such as fires and explosions will be conducted simultaneously.

In the construction industry, inspections target sites with a project scale under 12 billion KRW, focusing on supervising high-risk tasks such as steel frame and truss work at sites under 5 billion KRW where accident fatalities are increasing.

In manufacturing, inspections will target workplaces with fewer than 50 employees that possess ten major hazardous machines such as conveyors.

After inspections, financial support will be provided to small workplaces with safety vulnerabilities to improve hazard factors, and if improvements are not made, the Ministry of Employment and Labor will intervene with supervision.

For construction sites under 5 billion KRW, up to 30 million KRW will be supported for fall prevention safety facilities such as system scaffolding.

Manufacturing workplaces with fewer than 50 employees will receive up to 100 million KRW for replacing hazardous machines and improving outdated hazardous processes.

Park Duyong, Director of KOSHA, said, "We will do our best to ensure safety functions properly on site while also providing financial support to improve hazard factors."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.