'Three deaths every day': Labour safety under construction in India

Between 2017 and 2020, three people died and 11 were injured each day, on average, due to accidents in India’s registered factories, per the Ministry of Labour & Employment’s Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI) in November 2022 through a Right to Information request issued by IndiaSpend.

As many as 3,331 deaths were recorded between 2018 and 2020, but only 14 people were imprisoned for offences under the Factories Act, 1948, during the same period, reveals data.

DGFASLI collects occupational safety and health (OSH) statistics from state chief inspectors of factories and directors of industrial safety and health. These data represent only registered factories, although about 90 per cent of workers in India are employed in the informal sector.

Each year, over 350,000 deaths worldwide are due to occupational accidents, and these accidents also cause over 313 million serious injuries and absences from work, according to an International Labour Organization report in 2015, which called the human costs of lax investment in OSH to prevent occupational accidents and diseases “unacceptable”.

India passed the occupational safety and health law reforms in 2020, but experts say the new OSH Code is less stringent than the Factories Act, 1948, which currently covers labour welfare and safety. Even so, more than two years later, the new OSH Code is yet to be implemented.

Source: IndiaSpend