Procedure for conducting Occupational Safety and Health Audit in Kenya

Author Reference

Lango, B. (2016): “Procedure for conducting Occupational Safety and Health Audit in Kenya”. Intel Fire Group of Companies Blog. Nairobi, Kenya.

Many companies in Kenya do not have the health and safety department however the duties that are related to this department are usually transferred to the human resource (HR) department and the manager given the sole responsibility to ensure that the organization complies with all statutory requirements referring to Occupational Safety and Health (OSH). Every country usually has a procedure towards conducting an OSH audit and this procedure heavily relies on the various legislations that guides on OSH. In Kenya therefore, this legislation is the Occupational Safety and Health Act 2007 revised in 2010 to comply with the new Kenyan Constitution 2010. Since the writer is not a lawyer but a generalist in public safety, quoting the various section of the act may sound amateurish to those with the knowhow, but again this article is to be read and understood in the simplest of forms. Without inviting an inquiry from the “learned friends” therefore, the writer will only quotes significant sections of interest to this particular article. The big question therefore is: You have been assigned the task of ensuring your company complies with the statutory health and safety audit how do you go about it and what is the expected procedure? Your company is new in Kenya and wants to comply with the statutory safety obligations that requires health and safety audit to be conducted, what are the processes?

The procedure for conducting the occupational health and safety audit in Kenya is general and company specific depending on the nature of the operations. Under the Ministry of labour, social security and services (As it is currently referred to), there is the directorate of occupational safety and health services (DOSHS) whose mandate includes ensuring organizations compliance with occupational safety statutory obligations. For the Thomases that believe that seeing is believing, the OSH Act legal notice number 15 of 2007 and revised in 2010 section 11 (1-3) outlines the duty to the occupier as below:

11.       (1) The occupier of a workplace shall cause a thorough safety and health audit of his workplace to be carried out at least once in every period of twelve months by a safety and health advisor, who shall issue a report of such an audit containing the prescribed particulars to the occupier on payment of a prescribed fee and shall send a copy of the report to the Director.

(2) The audit report referred to in subsection (1) shall be preserved and be kept available for inspection by the occupational safety and health officer.

(3) An occupier who fails to comply with a duty imposed on him under this section commits an offence and shall on conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding five hundred thousand shillings or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to both.

Now if you are still here you can realize that from the law as it is stated, it only commands the organization (read occupier) on what is required of them but does not outline how they are supposed to do it (the process). Now this might be outlined in other documentation but again that is open for discussion. This discussion will still lead to a general process outlined below and specific to the company target for the safety audit.

OSH Audit Process

The Kenya’s Occupational Health and Safety Audit takes the following general process that might change from one organization to the next but only alters the veracity of the steps but not the intents:

1.      Occupational Safety and Health audit is conducted annually as per the law and once the company is due to conduct either the initial or the subsequent audits ensure that the company to be awarded the contract has a safety adviser registered with DOSHS and the individual’s license is current. This can be confirmed from DOSHS website http://www.doshs.go.ke/ (if doesn’t run don’t worry, it has been down lately) which lists the names of various safety advisers currently registered and even go a step further to include a passport photo-print of the real individuals so that you know who to expect, no surprises!

2.      Now you have sealed the safety adviser contract and sent an LPO, next decide on the site visit date and OSH checklist. The safety adviser should then send you a checklist of the requirements of the safety audit including documentation to be seen on the day of the site visit once you agree on the exact dates.

3.      Then the day of the site visit, you are the guide to the safety adviser or an appointed person with good knowledge of the premise and the working environment of the organization and at the same time will be picking on-site recommendation from the guru him- or herself. Of course, there will be a methodology of the safety audit process for the day which may include a desktop review of the documents, site inspection and a final meeting with the in-charge of organization safety for a debrief on the preliminary findings. Each of the safety advisers have their own methodology of the process during the site visit but the fact is he or she must visit the site, review the documents and indicate when the preliminary report will be out.

4.      The safety adviser will send a preliminary report on the OSH audit to the organization representatives for verification and confirmation. This is either done in soft or hard copies and the organization will go through and indicate either their affirmations and or reservations. Either way, the organization representative will send a confirmation message to the safety adviser on the preliminary report with their correction, affirmations and reservations.

5.      The safety adviser on receiving the confirmation either in the affirmative and or reservation to the various sections of the report, makes corrections and adjustments but not withstanding distortion of the status of OSH at the organization. Once this is done the safety adviser produces the final report copies (minimum six in number) and submit these to the organization for confirmation and authentication by signing and stamping the acknowledgement page of every report and return these back to the safety adviser.

6.      At this stage, the safety adviser submits the reports and a CD softcopy to DOSHS head office at safety house in industrial area, Nairobi. The original hardcopy and CD softcopy will be retained by the directorate and the remaining copies submitted to the county DOSHS office by the safety adviser. Of course you are in Nairobi and the DOSHS county office is also located there, your safety adviser will tell you exactly what to do and clarify difference between the DOSHS county and the headquarters offices.

7.      Once the submissions are done, the organization will get a copy of the submitted report either in duplicate copy and single copy and a soft copy. At this point, the safety adviser has met his or her end of the bargain and it is now the organization’s turn as per the contract.

This procedure must be known that is general to any OSH audit to be undertaken and are not specific to any workplace. If your main objective is to have a skeleton procedure of the process of undertaking OSH audit in Kenya, then you already have the above.  The various OSH safety advisers reading this articles will have a mirage of issues that have been omitted, but they must remember the article is for the health and safety managers who are non-safety managers meaning those with the responsibilities of safety and health management but have no formal qualification on the same. These procedures are also not final and are not authenticated by the directorate of occupational safety and health services Kenya. This documentation takes into consideration the practice by the various stakeholders in OSH audit after a study undertaken by the writer titled: “Critical factors influencing success of fire safety projects”.

SAFETY ADVISERS ARE PEOPLE FIRST AND THEIR MAIN AIM IS TO GUIDE FOR IMPROVEMENTS AND NOT MAGNIFY FAILURES.

The writer is a PhD Generalist in Public Safety Service Delivery

Contact: benard@intelfiregroup.com