Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2001, published 90th ILC session (2002)

Safety Provisions (Building) Convention, 1937 (No. 62) - Rwanda (Ratification: 1962)

The Committee notes the information communicated by the Government in its latest report.

Article 6 of the Convention. The Committee notes the information included in the report received in 2001 of the number of persons engaged in the building sector, not including casual and day-labourers, for 1991 and the number and classification of occupational accidents. The Committee requests the Government to supply recent data as far as possible. It also recalls that in addition to the number and classification of accidents, the Government is requested to give as detailed information as possible respecting the number of persons occupied in the building industry and covered by the statistics.

Article 4 and Part V of the report form. The Committee notes the absence of an inspection report. It requests the Government once again to indicate the manner in which the Convention is applied and to include extracts, relating to the building industry, from the reports of the inspection services, information regarding the number of workers covered by the relevant legislation, the number and nature of the contraventions reported, the number, nature and causes of accidents reported, etc.

The Committee notes the draft new Labour Code intended to replace the 1967 Labour Code which is currently in force. It notes in particular that, in the field of industrial health and safety, section 136 of the draft provides that the Minister responsible for labour shall regulate by order the general and specific conditions concerning workers’ health and safety at the workplace. The Committee notes that by virtue of section 199 of this draft Labour Code all previous legal and regulatory provisions contrary to the Act, particularly the Act of 28 February 1967 issuing the Labour Code as modified or supplemented to date and the orders adopted to implement it, will be repealed.

Bearing in mind these provisions of the draft Labour Code along with the changes in the Labour Code (1967), and particularly Order No. 21/94 of 23 July 1953, to which the Government always refers as being a standard applicable in industrial safety for the building industry, the Committee hopes, first, that the Government will take all the measures necessary to adopt in the near future the abovementioned draft Labour Code and that, secondly, the Government will take the necessary measures during the transition period to speedily adopt provisions that will apply the Articles of the Convention and will maintain temporarily in force the provisions that have not yet been replaced in order to avoid any legal vacuum and consequent lack of protection of workers in the building sector.