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Review Article
Current Status and the Future of Occupational Safety and Health
Legislation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
France Ncube
*
, Artwell Kanda
Department of Environmental Science, Bindura University of Science Education, Private Bag 1020, Bindura, Zimbabwe
article info
Article history:
Received 5 May 2017
Received in revised form
4 January 2018
Accepted 28 January 2018
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Harmonization
Legislation
Low- and middle-income country
Occupational safety and health
Reform
abstract
This article addresses three key issues. First, the commonalities, differences, strengths, and limitations of
existing occupational safety and health (OSH) legislation of low- and middle-income countries were
determined. Second, required revisions were identified and discussed to strengthen the laws in accor-
dance with the best international practice. Finally, proposals for additional OSH laws and interventions
were suggested. A literature search of OSH laws of 10 selected low- and middle-income countries was
carried out. The laws were subjected to uniform review criteria. Although the agricultural sector employs
more than 70% of the population, most of the reviewed countries lack OSH legislation on the sector.
Existing OSH laws are gender insensitive, fragmented among various government departments, insuf-
ficient, outdated, and nondeterrent to perpetrators and lack incentives for compliance. Conclusively, the
legal frameworks require reformation and harmonization for the collective benefit to employees, em-
ployers, and regulatory authorities. New OSH legislation for the agricultural sector is required.
Ó2018 Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an
open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1. Introduction
The provision of Occupational safety and health (OSH) services
to workers has long been a global concern. The International Labor
Organization (ILO) Convention No. 161 of 1985 [1] and the World
Health Organization (WHO)’s2008e2017 Global Plan for Action [2]
both demonstrate the value that the international community has
to safety issues. Unfortunately, developing countries are lagging far
behind in comparison with their industrialized counterparts, with
regard to the provision of OSH services to workers [3e6]. According
to LaDou [6],20e50% of workers in developed countries have ac-
cess to adequate OSH services, whereas in developing countries, it
is only 5e10%. Even worse, in some countries, for example,
Tanzania, less than 5% of the workforce has access to OSH services
[3]. More importantly, the lack of adequate OSH services contrib-
utes to high work-related injuries [3,4,7]. Because OSH legislation is
a vital component of injury prevention programs, compensation,
and litigation functions, an examination of such legislation for
developing low- and middle-income countries may help to identify
their current limitations, strengths, and priority areas for continual
improvement. Consequently, a review of existing OSH legislation is
required.
To date, original articles, short communications, commentaries,
and reviews on OSH legislation in low- and middle-income coun-
tries are limited. Nonetheless, a recent article by Moyo et al [8]
raised several critical issues on OSH legislation in Southern Africa
using case studies of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and
Zambia. For example, although this article is rich with details of
fragmentation of OSH laws among government departments, it
addressed neither how such fragmentation affects enforcement nor
how such fragmentation can be resolved. In the present study, this
issue was revisited with deliberate attempts to fill this gap.
The lack of gender sensitivity in OSH laws has not been
addressed in previous studies. In our opinion, this issue deserves a
closer scrutiny. Therefore, we provide evidence of lack of gender
sensitivity in existing OSH laws, its historical origins, and how it can
be corrected. We conclude this issue by detailing the ILO’s stand-
point on gender sensitivity in the context of OSH. Moreover, the
inadequacy of current OSH laws in the context of the agricultural
sector has not received sufficient attention in the available litera-
ture. For three reasons, this issue shall receive more scrutiny in our
present article: (1) in most low- and middle-income countries,
agriculture employs more than 70% of the entire labor force, yet it is
not fully covered by existing OSH laws, (2) there is compelling
*Corresponding author.
E-mail address: france.ncube257@gmail.com (F. Ncube).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Safety and Health at Work
journal homepage: www.e-shaw.org
2093-7911/$ esee front matter Ó2018 Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-
ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2018.01.007
Safety and Health at Work xxx (2018) 1e7
Please cite this article in press as: Ncube F, Kanda A, Current Status and the Future of Occupational Safety and Health Legislation in Low- and
Middle-Income Countries, Safety and Health at Work (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2018.01.007
evidence that the greatest number of injuries occurs in the agri-
cultural sector [9,10] although a large number is also recorded in
the construction industry [11], and (3) workers are exposed to
pesticides from agricultural products [10].
To the best of our knowledge, no documented study on OSH laws
has used predesigned review criteria for analyzing these laws.
Currently, there are no universally agreed upon international OSH
criteria for evaluating the adequacy of OSH legislation. We devel-
oped ten-point review criteria and uniformly applied it to OSH
legislation of the selected countries (Table 1). The crux of the review
criteria was to ultimately influence future OSH policy directions in
such countries by unearthing key areas requiring correction.
2. Materials and methods
A literature search of OSH laws of some selected low- and
middle-income countries was carried out. We enrolled countries
where we were able to obtain their OSH laws from applicable
sources such as government printers and the Internet. Most na-
tional laws were readily available online for free download. In the
Internet search, we used PubMed and a free search tool with
combinations of the terms: Developing country, Factories, Act,
Compensation, Scheme, OSH laws, mining, pneumoconiosis, Public
Health Act, Occupational Safety and Health, regulation, and Agri-
culture. Efforts were made to get the current versions of the OSH
laws from government printers of the reviewed countries. We
enrolled countries where we were able to obtain at least three OSH
laws. These were Botswana, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, South
Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The laws were
subjected to uniform review criteria which constituted elements of
legislative content such as scope, occupational health surveillance,
worker compensation, gender sensitivity, and administrative na-
ture, for example, structure, fragmentation, enforcement, contra-
dictions, operationalization, and continuous improvement
(Table 1).
3. Results
3.1. Legislative content
The present study unearthed several deficits on the content of
the analyzed OSH laws (Table 2). Fundamentally, the laws grossly
lack, among many other issues, coverage of agricultural workers,
the right of workers to refuse to work in unsafe work stations,
provisions for OSH servicesefunding mechanisms, requirements on
documentary evidence of functionality of safety committees, and
gender sensitivity. Still, other preventive measures, such as
mandatory organizational OSH systems and chemical safety
emphasis, are largely yet to be incorporated in the laws. Taken
together, the vast shortcomings in the content of the OSH laws
require the urgent attention of policy makers if the United Nations
Social Development Goal number 8 on decent work and article 5 of
the ILO convention 161 on Occupational Health Services are to be
achieved by low- and middle-income countries.
3.2. Administrative concerns
Reviewed OSH laws had various administrative limitations that
may adversely impinge on their effective implementation by
responsible regulatory authorities. Some limitations pertain to their
structure, fragmentation, enforcement, and contradictions (Table3).
4. Discussion
4.1. Legislative concerns
Depressingly, despite employing a huge workforce and experi-
encing such high injury frequency rates [9,10], we found very few
Acts addressing OSH concerns of agricultural workers (Table 2), and
the few concerned Acts narrowly considered mainly chemical
hazards; therefore, they too need to be configured to detail other
Table 1
Review criteria for OSH laws of selected low- and middle-income countries
Criterion Description of criterion
Scope of coverage Are there Acts that adequately cover OSH issues in the mainstay of the national economy,
e.g., agriculture, mining, and manufacturing industries? Do the laws provide funding
mechanisms for OSH services? Do the OSH laws detail the responsibilities of employers
and employees in safety promotion? Are there legal requirements for the establishment
of a safety and health committee?
Occupational health surveillance Are there specified surveillance requirements of the worker and the work environment?
Are there provisions on exposure limits for occupational hazards such as dust,
vibrations, noise and workplace audits, hazard operability studies, and risk assessment?
Compensation Is there commitment of legislation to worker compensation for injury?
Gender sensitivity How do OSH laws address issues of gender, historical imbalances, and regional and
international conventions that abolished all forms of humankind discrimination?
Structure Is the basic layout of OSH laws user-friendly: organized into sections, subsections,
paragraphs, and sub-paragraphs? Are key terms including those in the Act’s title
defined?
Fragmentation Is there duplication of roles between the lead government agency and others in execution
of OSH laws? If yes, what are the implications and possible solutions?
Regulation and enforcement Are the fines/penalties deterrent enough at organizational level or their value is
prohibitive only to individuals? Are there legal provisions within the OSH laws for the
use of the collected fines/penalties in OSH promotion activities such as training or the
fines join the mainstream of state funds? Do the OSH laws provide for the establishment
of industrial courts? Do the OSH laws have mechanisms such as incentives to support
those who comply with (e.g., reduction of tax band) or focus on law breakers?
Contradictions In what ways do the national OSH laws contradict with other relevant statutes at national,
regional, and international levels?
Operationalization Do adequate statutory instruments (SIs) exist for addressing omissions and provisions of
existing OSH laws? Do the laws oblige employers to provide specialist OSH services to
workers?
Continuous improvement Is there room for revisions to strengthen, reform, and harmonize existing OSH laws?
OSH, Occupational safety and health.
Saf Health Work 2018;-:1e72
Please cite this article in press as: Ncube F, Kanda A, Current Status and the Future of Occupational Safety and Health Legislation in Low- and
Middle-Income Countries, Safety and Health at Work (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2018.01.007
hazards, such as, dust, vibrations, and noise from, for instance,
powered farming equipment such as tractors, mowers, and chain
and hand saws and mowers. In addition, given the vulnerabilities of
the farm worker against (1) the superiority of the farm owner and
(2) the localization of farm activities without legal provisions for
inspectorate services, any forms of regulation, compensation, and
medical surveillance, we strongly feel that the agricultural worker
has been sidelined in the context of OSH services provision.
Therefore, work-related risks from old and new production
equipment, work practices, and activities may go unrecognized,
unabated, unmonitored, and undocumented. Such shortcomings
present a clear priority for future development. On the basis of such
omissions, it can thus be concluded that the precolonial, the colo-
nial and postcolonial governments in most low- and middle-in-
come countries have done very little to address the OSH burdens of
the farm worker.
Depriving agricultural workers of OSH services is against the
spirit and letter of ILO’s convention No. 184 of 2001, article 19 and
21 (1). Article 19 provides for the improvement of OSH issues in the
agricultural sector through formulation, implementation, and re-
view of national OSH policies and legislation for accident and injury
prevention. Article 21 (1) emphasizes that workers in the agricul-
tural sector must be covered by an insurance or social security
scheme against fatal and nonfatal occupational injuries to the level
equal to other sectors. Inasmuch as there are OSH Acts for the
mining and manufacturing industries, the present study confronts
this shortcoming by calling for the enactment of the Agricultural
Safety and Health Acts. Such Acts, doubtlessly, will be a vital tool for
championing OSH issues in the sector. Beyond the formulation and
implementation of such OSH laws, there is need for policy makers
to support further research in agricultural practices so as to identify
priority OSH issues deserving attention. A recent review covering
epidemiological studies on occupational health risks to waste
workers and informal recyclers cited methodological limitations of
the existing body of research with regard to proving causality issues
[63]. Consequently, we recommend that policy makers need to
invest more in rigorous research efforts that can yield sound in-
sights toward strengthening OSH policies and legislation.
On the other hand, although the mining and manufacturing
industries of low- and middle-income countries are richly covered
by specific sectorial national OSH legislation [14e22,35e
38,40,41,44e56,58e62], such laws have tended to ignore various
critical issues. The ILO convention 170 contains the right of em-
ployees to refuse to work in unsafe and unhealthy conditions, but
this right was generally not enshrined in most Acts (Table 2). We
Table 2
Legislative content of OSH laws
Criterion Main issues assessed on the criterion Main findings on OSH laws
Present Absent
Scope OSH provisions on agricultural hazards [12,13,35,36,38,43,44] [14e34,37,39e42,45e49]
Coverage of informal sector & self-employed [35,36,38e40,42e44] [12,14e17,19e22,37,41,45e54]
Right to refuse to work in unsafe work [35,41,43] [12e34,36e40,42,44e49].
OSH services funding mechanisms None All laws
Safety committees and representatives [12,21,35,36,38,40,41,44].[13,15e20,22e34,37,39,42,43,45e49]
Mandatory training of safety committees [36,41] [13e17,20,26e35,38e40,42e48]
Frequency of Safety, Health and
Environment committee meetings &
reports
[12,40] [13e39,41e49]
Safety and health audits and their frequency [12,36] [13,35,38e40,42e49]
Mandatory organizational OSH policies [12,21,35,36,38,40,41,44] [13e20,22,26e34,39,42,43,45e49]
Chemical safety in workplaces [12,13,21,35,36,38,40,43e45,48] [14e20,22,26e34,39,42,46,49]
Employers’general duties in workplaces [12,21,35,36,38,40,41,43,44,50] [13e20,22,24e34,39,42,45e49]
Employees’general duties in workplaces [15,21,35,36,38,41,43,44] [13e20,24e34,39,42,45e49]
Mandatory OSH systems e.g., Occupational
Health and Safety Assessment Series 18001
None Absent in all laws
Occupational surveillance Exposure limits for dust, vibrations,
light, and heat
None Absent in all laws
Worker surveillance [12,20,21,35,36,38,41,44,46] [13e19,39,42,43,45,47e49]
Workplace surveillance [12,22,35,36,38,40,41,44] [13,15e21,39,42,43,45e47,49]
At least three OSH expert categories None All laws
Compensation Existence of injury compensation laws [50e56] Nothing found for India
Minimum claims None Absent in all laws
Gender sensitivity Gender-biased terminology in OSH laws [12e16,19e26,28,30,32,34,36e40,
42,45e47,49e56,58e62]
[13,17,18,27,29,33,35,41,43,44,48]
OSH, Occupational safety and health.
Table 3
Administrative concerns on OSH laws
Criterion Main findings
Structure - Constituted contents page, operational defi-
nition of terms, sections, subsections, para-
graphs, and sub-paragraphs.
- Some defined key terms in the Act’s title [12
e14,16,17,19e22,34,37,40,41,44,46e52], but
some did not [15,18,26
e33,35,36,38,39,42,43,45,53,54].
Fragmentation - Some are mainly administered by the Health
Ministry [14e16,23e34] and Ministry of
Mines [15,17,18,41,47e49], and others by the
Ministry of Labor [14,16,19e22,35
e37,39,40,42e46,50e62].
Enforcement
and regulation
- Heavy emphasis on fines and penalties, but no
specified incentives to those who comply.
- The small value of the fines which varied from
country to country.
- The OSH laws are not self-sustaining as fines
for breaking them joined the other state
funds and uses.
Contradictions - Some OSH laws were not gender sensitive
(Table 2) and contradicted employment laws
and country constitutions that preached
antidiscrimination [39,43,57,72e74].
- Still, some OSH laws compete for supremacy
over one another, for example, Zimbabwe’s
laws [20,26,47] contained the statement that
“where the Act shall contradict with any other
Act, this Act shall prevail”.
Operationalization - The laws had statutory instruments address-
ing omissions and/or provisions of the mother
Act.
OSH, Occupational safety and health.
F. Ncube and A. Kanda / OSH Legislation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries 3
Please cite this article in press as: Ncube F, Kanda A, Current Status and the Future of Occupational Safety and Health Legislation in Low- and
Middle-Income Countries, Safety and Health at Work (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2018.01.007
feel this right deserves to be explicitly stated in the OSH laws.
Crucially, most labor and employment Acts (Table 2) need to be
broadened to detail the general obligations of employers and em-
ployees on OSH issues.
The funding mechanisms for OSH services were not embedded
in the OSH laws. If this omission is not corrected, some employers
may underfund their organizational OSH services. Still, OSH Acts
did not harness the international best practices on accident and
injury prevention such as the Occupational Health and Safety
Assessment Series (OSHAS) 18001 and often, OSH policies. There is
urgent need to legally compel employers to establish such
requirements.
Depressingly, the OSH laws missed emphasis on setting national
standards on hazards such as dust and vibrations. Exposure limits,
for example, threshold limit values and time-weighted averages,
are not prescribed, yet they should form the core yardstick of an
occupational health surveillance program. Furthermore, hazard
profiling, audits, and risk assessments are rarely contained in the
laws and there is no legal requirement for employers to submit
such reports to regulatory authorities. Still, some laws designed to
deal with dusty occupations [20,46], completely negated workplace
risk assessments, and preventive OSH measures. Rather, they
merely put strong emphasis on worker medical examinations and
provision of protective clothing. Yet, these are the lowest priority
options in the hierarchy of control of occupational hazards. We
recommend widening their scope to harness higher priority pre-
ventive measures in the hierarchy, such as elimination, substitu-
tion, and engineering, which can make the work environment fit
for safe work.
Most OSH laws still lack provisions for setting up workplace
safety and health committees (Table 2). Where provided, there
were rarely legal requirements on how often they should hold
meetings and provide documentary proof such as reports and mi-
nutes. Therefore, such committees may exist in theory but practi-
cally be dysfunctional. We suggest the incorporation of provisions
on minimum frequency of committee meetings and submission of
documentary proof to the employer and regulatory authorities. The
laws richly stressed it for workers but were deafeningly silent on
specialized training for capacitating safety committees.
Although public health encompasses OSH issues in practice,
these were not adequately handled in the public health Acts. For
example, the duties of employers and employees in work envi-
ronments were not provided. We propose that such duties be
clearly defined in the public health Acts as they are the mother Acts
governing all health-related issues. The functions of the health
ministries did not contain OSH issues. We suggest inclusion of an
additional function in the public health Acts on promoting pre-
vention of injuries and diseases in work environments.
On the positive side, we found that most low- and middle-in-
come countries have an established compensation legal framework
(Table 2) in compliance with ILO’s Convention No. 121 of 1964 on
Employment Injury Benefits [64]. However, numerous legislative
obstacles exist in the laws which may ultimately disadvantage
many deserving workers. First, the laws do not provide a minimum
standard for claims, and some do not cover informal workers and
the self-employed. Still, the level of compensation promised by the
compensation laws does not consider the severity of risk encoun-
tered by workers, and the unwillingness to compensate is apparent
and frightening. For instance, Tanzania formulated its Workers
Compensation Act in 2008, but its implementation date was
deliberately pushed far ahead to July 2015. This country is still not
bound in any way by ILO’s compensation convention no 21 as it is
not a member. In Malawi, it appears that the fund has not been set
up. Employers pay to the Commissioner’soffice after an injury has
occurred [71]. This may suggest that an injured worker deserving
compensation could encounter delays in receiving such claims. This
defeats the rationale of the fund. Therefore, delays in enforcement
of new laws require urgent attention not to delay justice.
The compensation claim procedures in low- and middle-income
countries are extremely long and bureaucratic. This may demoti-
vate or exclude many deserving workers. For example, existing laws
engage in fault-finding games by insisting that the injury must not
be due to workers’negligence [21,50e54,56]. However, the Uganda
Compensation Act [55] must be commended for insisting that
compensation must be paid regardless of “whether or not the in-
capacity or death of the worker was due to the recklessness or
negligence of the worker or otherwise.”We feel that it is unlikely
that a normal worker can deliberately commit a fatal injury just for
a claim. Therefore, the condition on noncompensation for injuries
related to negligence appears unnecessary. Most compensation
laws insist that reporting of an injury must not be delayed. The
claim must be made within 17 days from the injury date in
Botswana and within 14 days in Zimbabwe. However, the Work
Injury Benefits Acts of Kenya [50] must be commended for
accepting claims made within 12 months after injury or death. The
injury-reporting time must be extended to at least a month to
accommodate genuine delays associated with factors such as injury
trauma and financial handicaps. Conclusively, we propose setting of
a minimum standard on compensation claims rather than to leave
the issue to the voluntary whims of responsible authorities.
More disheartening, the bulk of the reviewed OSH laws were not
gender sensitive. The terms he, him, and himself were used to refer
to a worker as if female workers were not covered by these Acts
[14,15,19e22,30,31,34,38,45e52]. The same terms were used in
reference to inspectors, engineers, competent persons, medical
officers of health, magistrates, and government analysts, [19,23e
26,33,38]. Terms such as chairman rather than chairperson were
used to refer to heads of certain boards [15,20,22,26,31
,38,39,45,47,51]. Such an approach appears to wrongly convey a
message that women were still not eligible for such responsibilities.
Moreover, complainants, owners, and occupiers of buildings, con-
tractors, clients, patients, parents, and adults were treated using the
same gender-biased terminology, as if one needed to be a male
person to qualify to be in those categories [12,19,20,22,26,28,33
,38,45,47e49,56]. In most Acts, even ministers (legislators), secre-
taries of the Act’s enforcing ministries, and commissioners were
also referred to as he or him. Certainly, if legislators fail to detect
such anomalies, it raises extreme doubts on the level of scrutiny
accorded to the law formulation process. Some titles of the Acts
appeared more biased to males. For example, the Ghana Work-
men’s Compensation Law of 1987 [56] may need a unisex title such
as Workers Compensation Law. OSH laws, particularly for Uganda,
were found to be gender sensitive in terms of our criterion
(Table 2). They used the terms chairperson rather than
chairman and himself/herself and him/her, instead of just he/
himself.
The lack of gender sensitivity in OSH laws could probably be
attributed to (1) historical fields such mining and manufacturing
that were dominated by males and (2) government administrative
office positions such as inspector and minister that have been
traditionally no-go areas for women. Yet today, no one is likely to
argue that these fields now employ an appreciable proportion of
women. We, therefore, propose that such segregatory terms be
replaced with gender-sensitive terms such as employee, employer,
worker, and chairperson where applicable. This is in line with in-
ternational conventions [65e68] and regional charters [69,70] that
Saf Health Work 2018;-:1e74
Please cite this article in press as: Ncube F, Kanda A, Current Status and the Future of Occupational Safety and Health Legislation in Low- and
Middle-Income Countries, Safety and Health at Work (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2018.01.007
abolished all forms of discrimination against humankind. Indeed,
OSH laws of low- and middle-income countries seem to be static in
a dynamic world. The OSH laws require urgent reform so as to
reflect modern societal values and humanity, particularly with
regards to gender sensitivity issues.
4.2. Administrative issues
The OSH laws followed a structured and user-friendly format
(Table 3). Such a well-organized approach makes them user-
friendly particularly with regard to enforcement and ligation
functions. However, some laws did not define some key terms in
the Act’s title, thus making the laws less clear. Although the fac-
tories Acts defined what constitute a factory, the definitions were
often narrowly confined to factories employing more than five
workers. We propose that key terms in Acts be defined to reflect the
focus of the Act and the factories Acts be widened to cover other
excluded factories.
Furthermore, OSH legislation is fragmented among various
government departments (Table 3). Moyo et al [8] observed this
shortcoming and came to similar conclusions with regard to
selected countries of southern Africa. Such fragmentation may
result in duplication of roles, overlaps, and contradictions among
the laws, lack of coordination, and waste of scarce resources among
administering departments. For example, in the public health Acts
and the factories Acts, inspectors have the same right to enter any
premises or vessel for the purposes of inspection, and this includes
factories. Clearly, this represents duplication of roles. Therefore, the
OSH laws require harmonization, possibly under a single regulatory
authority, for effective coordination, consistency, and uniformity.
The nonegender-sensitive laws contradicted employment laws
and country constitutions (Table 3), which preach antidiscrimina-
tion. This represents a grave contradiction where legislators use
gender-insensitive terminologies in OSH laws but urge citizens to
be gender sensitive and shun all forms of discrimination in other
laws. Therefore, we urge our legislators to revisit and reform the
OSH laws and rectify the contradictions.
There are contradictions in certain legislation of some reviewed
countries which demonstrates a quest for supremacy of OSH laws
over one another. For example, Zimbabwe’s Acts [20,26,47] contain
the statement, “where the Act shall contradict with any other Act,
this Act shall prevail”. This raises sobering concerns as to which Act
is really superior to the other as the documents do not show to
which Acts they are superior. We suggest that this anomaly be
addressed such that the Acts portray themselves as complementary
and adjunct to one another. Although Zimbabwe is a signatory to
ILO conventions that set the international noise exposure threshold
at 85 dB, its Mining Management statutory instrument 109 section
92 states that noise exposure level should not exceed 90 dB. We feel
that when national laws set limits above international threshold
without sound scientific basis, it presents a contradiction. On the
positive side, we observed that employment laws in low- and
middle-income countries [39,42,43,57] upheld ILO convention No.
138 of 1978 and 182 of 1999 that illegalized child labor.
Existing OSH legislation in low- and middle-income countries
places heavy emphasis on fines and penalties for its contravention.
None of them had provisions for specified incentives to those who
comply. For example, possible incentives may entail reduction of
tax bands for compliant organizations and the introduction of
awards for excellence in safety provision. The small fines which
vary from country to country appear slightly deterrent only to in-
dividuals but not to medium and large organizations which can
easily budget for the penalties. Costly and deterrent fines may be
required to deter present and future perpetrators of unsafe and
undesirable OSH practices. Fines for breaking OSH laws in most
low- and middle-income countries are combined with other state
funds without any specific requirement that exists for their use in
OSH issues. Resultantly, these laws are not self-sustaining. This
scenario may complicate issues, particularly for resource-
constrained low-income countries. Possible improvements may
entail amending the OSH laws to specify how funds gathered in
their enforcement are to be used. Furthermore, most OSH laws had
statutory instruments that comprehensively addressed the pro-
visions of the mother Acts. For example, several key provisions of
Zimbabwe’s Factories and Works Act [14] are detailed through
statutory instruments [58e62].
5. Conclusion
The shortcomings and opportunities for reformation of OSH
laws in low- and middle-income countries have been presented in
this article. The expectations of the ILO and WHO on OSH laws are
largely yet to be codified into their national laws. The countries
appear to be using outdated, fragmented, and nondeterrent legis-
lation which needs to be gender sensitive and strengthened in
tandem with international best practices of OSH. Further research
needs to consider other elements not addressed in this article,
which should be included in the OSH legislation.
There are some limitations in the present study. First, the
eligibility criteria used required that enrolled countries have at
least three OSH laws available online or obtainable from other
sources such as government printers. We were unable to get OSH
legislation of some countries. Because the unenrolled countries
may have OSH laws entirely different in terms of strengths and
shortcomings when compared with those of reviewed nations, our
study results may not apply to such countries. More transparency
and easier access to public documents may richly benefit further
work on improving policies and harmonizing what is today a
complicated puzzle. Second, a lot has not been answered by the
previous literature and the present study. For example, significant
uncertainty still remains concerning what is not working and needs
to be improved in international health with regards to occupational
exposure and safety. Therefore, further work is extremely needed
to generate such knowledge and supportive evidence.
Furthermore, although the ILO and WHO are the acknowledged
international parents of OSH, recent literature richly demonstrates
possible and actionable measures that member states can adopt to
effect desirable improvements. For example, threats to these
intergovernmental organizations to exit membership have possible
serious financial repercussions such as loss of subscriptions, which
may stifle their functions [75]. Dhatt et al [76] recently bemoan that
the WHO leadership is predominantly male dominated and
stressed the need for redressing its gender inequalities. The lack of
gender parity in international organizations makes them less
suitable for meaningfully leading member states in efforts
toward rectifying the gender shortcomings identified in OSH laws
of low- and middle-income countries. Although activities in various
organizations may have negative consequences on the environ-
ment, the present article did not examine environmental laws in
the reviewed countries because we felt this is a broad and crucial
area deserving a separate study.
Nonetheless, despite these limitations, the present study has
two major strengths. First, to the best of our knowledge, it is the
first broad-based review covering OSH legislation in various re-
gions of Africa and Asia. Such a wide scope of focus may enrich the
existing body of knowledge on the current status and needs of OSH
legislation. Second, the article used predesigned ten-point criteria
so as to produce a fair discussion of the OSH legislation in the
selected countries. The review criteria deliberately included legis-
lative and administrative elements promoted by ILO conventions
F. Ncube and A. Kanda / OSH Legislation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries 5
Please cite this article in press as: Ncube F, Kanda A, Current Status and the Future of Occupational Safety and Health Legislation in Low- and
Middle-Income Countries, Safety and Health at Work (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2018.01.007
that most of these countries are a signatory. This inclusion enables
us to reflect on the extent to which the countries have addressed
their international commitments in their national legal framework.
Conflicts of interest
All authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgments
The study was self-funded.
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Please cite this article in press as: Ncube F, Kanda A, Current Status and the Future of Occupational Safety and Health Legislation in Low- and
Middle-Income Countries, Safety and Health at Work (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2018.01.007