The Factories Act, 2015

The Ministry of Labour & Employment has recently released a draft of The Factories Act, 1948 as Draft Amendment Proposals 2015.

As an introduction, the main objective and reason behind this new draft amendment proposal is mentioned as below-

“The present Factory Act, 1948 is very old and has not kept pace with the requirement of fast changing global economy, technological changes, integration of the global economy through trade, investment, financial engineering, multi- location value chain, growth of information technology. The traditional inspection system is found inadequate to ensure work place safety and allied issues in a factory. The objectives are to ensure a safe and secure work place through a set of simple preventive and effective curative measures, foster an eco-system favourable to setting up of factories and creation of rapid employment opportunities. The new system is aimed at making the factory environment evolving and dynamically adjusting to changing times. The salient features of the proposed system is, –unobtrusive, transparent inspection to promote occupational safety, and prevent occupational diseases, sickness, health hazard and to put in place instrumentality(s) to create an ecosystem where labour intensive enterprise is encouraged, regulatory compliance is convenient, simple and encouraging, and cost effective to enable Indian produce competitive in the global market”.

In this draft amendment proposal, there are some additions- one new chapter and few new sections. The main change is about having a regulator in the form of Occupational Safety and Health Board of India (OSHBI), with its main role being framing regulations on occupational safety, health, welfare and general working conditions of the workers employed in the factories.

There are some sections omitted and clubbed together as a new section. And there are some changes in almost all the remaining sections also.

Please find attached the summary of various chapters/ sections as per The Factories Act, 1948 Vs. The Draft Amendment Proposals 2015.

There is a meeting planned in the first week of November between the Ministry and the labour representatives to take this draft forward, followed by moving it in the Parliament. It is expected to be released in early 2016 as an amendment act.

In case any of you want the complete draft amendment proposal, please send me an e-mail so that I can forward it to you.