PHL, S. Korea ink pact to enhance occupational safety, health for workers

The Philippines and South Korea will exchange notes on workers’ occupational safety and health (OSH) as part of efforts to enhance safety in the workplace, the Department of Labor and Employment said Thursday.

The DOLE said the agreement between the two countries was formalized in a pact signed in the last week of July.

The pact is in line with the Arrangement for Technical Cooperation between the DOLE and the Korean Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA), which was signed on August 25, 2010.

“The new agreement is in consonance with the desire of both countries to continue their cooperation, with a view to enhancing the OSH system in the Philippines within the framework of its national standards and regulations,” DOLE secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said in a statement.

DOLE Undersecretary Lourdes Trasmonte, Labor Standards and Social Protection cluster head, signed the pact on behalf of the Department after meeting with a delegation from South Korea headed by Lee Jae Kap, Vice Minister of the Korean Ministry of Employment and Labor, for the pact signing.

Baldoz said the agreement aims to establish a framework of cooperation between the DOLE and Korea’s Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) “to provide assistance for the enhancement of the Philippines’s OSH policy and systems by sharing Korea’s OSH laws, systems, and policy experiences with the DOLE.”

Under the agreement, Korea’s MOEL will provide financial and technical support to DOLE in:

1. analyzing the Philippines’s policies on industrial accident prevention, workplace improvement, and industrial accident compensation, and provide advice and guidelines for the enhancement of OSH policies in the Philippines;

2. sending experts to the Philippines to provide assistance for the enhancement of OSH policies, especially with regard to industrial accident prevention, workplace improvement, and industrial accident compensation;

3. providing training to the Philippines’s policy makers/implementers in Korea so they can learn about Korea’s experiences, including the implementation of policies on industrial accident prevention, workplace improvement, and industrial accident compensation and the management of relevant institutions.

For its part, the DOLE will cooperate with, and provide financial, technical, and administrative support to MOEL in:

1. assisting MOEL in undertaking its advisory activities.

2. providing administrative support to the Korean experts during their stay in the Philippines.

3. providing financial and administrative support agreed upon between MOEL and DOLE to the Philippines’s policymakers/implementers for their participation in the training courses in Korea and seminars in the Philippines.

Implementation

The MOEL has designated its International Cooperation Bureau, and the DOLE its Bureau of Working Conditions, as the offices in charge of implementing the arrangement.

“The specific activities in each area of cooperation will be determined through consultation between the responsible bureaus of MOEL and DOLE, between the responsible bureau of MOEL and a policy advisory agency designated by MOEL, or between the responsible bureau of DOLE and the policy advisory agency designated by MOEL,” said Baldoz.

She added the details necessary to carry out the cooperation activities, such as sending Korean experts to the Philippines, training policy makers/implementers in Korea, paying for expenses, and others, are subject to an Implementation Arrangement to be concluded between the DOLE and the policy advisory agency of the MOEL. — BM, GMA News