The new Labor Safety and Health Act (勞工安全衛生法) officially takes effect today.
The law, formerly known as the Occupational Safety and Health Act, was amended to incorporate an “overwork prevention clause” that is to safeguard workers against illness or diseases caused by excessive overwork.
The amended act is designed to safeguard the health of all workers, including the self-employed and those who work under the management of others, and must be observed by businesses in all professions, Ministry of Labor Affairs officials said.
It stipulates that employers must have preventive measures in place against mental, stress-induced and skeletal or other physical ailments or injuries in the workplace.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration yesterday said that the new act would benefit about 10.67 million workers nationwide, a sharp increase over the 6.67 million covered by the old law.
The agency said the new act is to be implemented in two phases.
The first phase, which starts today, focuses on workplace safety and emergency response mechanisms.
It gives workers the right to take shelter on their own initiative in the case of emergencies, and shortens the amount of time employers have to report an emergency to the government from no more than 24 hours to no more than eight hours after the incident occurs.
The second phase, which is to take effect on Jan. 1 next year, will evaluate the overall safety at working environments, the agency said.
Areas of inspection include the safety and licensing of machinery and equipment, as well as the registration status of chemicals, it added.
The agency said it will also conduct safety inspections and risk evaluations on high-risk industries, such as petroleum refining, on a regular basis, to prevent work-related accidents.
Companies which fail to conform to the safety standards risk a maximum fine of NT$3 million (US$100,000).
The agency plans to host a number of public-information seminars on the amended act and its implications.
There is also a question-and-answer Web page on the agency’s Web site (ww.osha.gov.tw/front/news/261/140).
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching