Labour-Safety Inspection: the Regulatory Framework
Supervision of labour safety in Georgia is regulated by the Georgian Law on Labour Safety — inspection, investigation and administrative penalties all operate within its framework. An important caveat at the outset: the separate organic law „On Labour Inspection“, which this law occasionally cross-references, is not part of the legal basis of this page — that layer of inspector status and powers is not reflected here and requires separate consideration. Likewise, EU-OSHA and other international frameworks are comparative context only, not operative norms.
The backbone of the system is the employer's duties. Taking into account the size of the enterprise, the number of employees, working conditions and the respective risks, the employer must observe the legal norms of labour safety, ensure that physical, chemical and biological hazard factors create no danger to employees' health, record accidents and occupational diseases, regularly check the safety of technical equipment, and periodically measure and assess production-environment factors — noise, vibration, lighting, dust, chemical and biological agents.
Training, Information and Insurance
The employer must conduct trainings and instruction for employees and provide information in a language they understand: safe-labour principles, safe use of machinery, emergency situations and evacuation, existing hazards and risks. Training is mandatory at hiring — before work begins; on transfer to another workplace; before introducing a new technological process; and repeatedly, according to plan. Trainings are conducted during working hours, missed days are counted as excused and paid, and they are free of charge for employees.
Special protection covers vulnerable groups: the employer must not employ a person under 18 on work harmful to their health or safety, and must not employ pregnant or nursing women on work harmful to mother or child or involving special risk. At heavy, harmful and hazardous workplaces the employer must insure employees against accidents at its own expense. All costs of labour-safety and sanitary-hygienic measures fall on the employer.
Accident Registration: the 24-Hour Rule
The trigger for inspection is often precisely an accident. The employee must immediately notify the employer of an accident in the workspace. The employer, in turn, must: immediately take measures to avert further danger; preserve the accident site until the arrival of competent organs (except where measures are needed to protect life or health or to avoid serious economic damage); and, within 24 hours of the accident, notify the employees' association and representative, the law-enforcement organs and the supervision organ — in the cases provided for by law.
The employer records accidents and occupational-disease cases with the joint participation of the competent departments, the labour-safety specialist and the injured employee, and preserves evidence of medium-severity, severe, fatal and mass accidents — the detailed procedures are established by an administrative-legal act of the minister.