Foreign consulting companies are to be allowed to provide legal
services related to occupational health and safety for Chinese
enterprises except for those involved in national security and
business secrets, China's workplace safety watchdog said yesterday.
Yang Fu, director of the Technological Improvement and Equipment
Department under the State Administration of Work Safety
Supervision, said: "The details of such business provided by
overseas people are still under consideration by the relevant
departments but one thing is for sure -- such investment must
obtain the approval of the higher authority."
The companies will be required to be conversant with China's laws
and regulations on workplace health and safety and should not apply
foreign standards to their services, Yang said.
The government's intention to set up a standardized
workplace-safety system in enterprises was in line with
international requirements and the trend towards globalization,
Yang added.
"In this regard, we have borrowed lots of experiences from
industrialized countries and the International Labor Organization
(ILO)," Yang told a press conference in Beijing yesterday.
There is increasingly active and deep international economic and
trade exchanges, and the world economies have showed a willingness
to form a package of unified standards on workplace health and
safety, according to Yang.
In
June last year, the ILO published guidelines on occupational safety
and health management systems (ILO/OSH 2001) to encourage countries
to become more effective in preventing accidents.
The press conference unveiled the Chinese Government's new
guidelines on setting up a workplace-safety management system among
enterprises nationwide.
Zhao Tiechui, deputy general-director of the safety watchdog,
reminded yesterday's press conference that the government released
a pilot standard on workplace safety in October 1999 and set up a
national committee on safety standards verification over
enterprises in July 2000.
The government encouraged enterprises nationwide to adopt the
system, believed to be in line with modern enterprise management
strategies, Zhao said.
Since July 2000, about 20,000 employees among 700 enterprises have
accepted training on workplace safety and 200 enterprises have set
up safety management systems to root out hazards and prevent
accidents.
(China
Daily January 31, 2002)