Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter V. - Working conditions in factories

Collection:: Economics Books

WORKING CONDITIONS IN FACTORIES. 61 Prevention of Accidents. For this no quick cure is possible. Better and more general education, improved health and physique, greater discipline in work, and the building up of a more regular factory population would all be valuable. In the meantime, however, much is being done to increase safety, and more still remains to be done. There is no department of work to which Inspectors of Factories have given more attention through- out India in recent years, and if it had not been for their patient and thorough work, the increase in the number of accidents would have been much greater. Generally speaking, inspectors have regarded this as their primary duty, and in those provinces where the staff has not been sufficient to secure adequate inspection in all directions, this branch of their work has suffered least. Their efforts to secure adequate fencing and the enforcement of safety regulations have been coupled with an endeavour to educate the workers. In this some employers have co- operated by the employment of safety posters, and, more rarely, the establishment of a safety committee ; but there are other employers who themselves need education. We believe that, in spite of illiteracy, something can be done along the lines of the Safety First ” move- ment, which has made great headway in the last decade in most in- dustrialised countries. Safety committees should be of considerable assistance in large factories employing a number of skilled operatives. Much could probably be done in such cases by charging a particular officer with the duty of investigating and preventing accidents, and bhis is one of the many directions in which a special labour officer can give valuable service. InJapan the safety movement started as recently as 1916 with the founding of a Safety First Association. From 1925 on- wards two associations, the Industrial Welfare Association and the J apan Mines Association, were together responsible for considerable headway being made throughout Japan in accident prevention. The custom of inaugurating Safety Days and Safety Weeks spread rapidly, until in 1929 it was universal. As a result it is stated that “instead of being only a sporadic agitation, the Safety Week has had a lasting effect as it has almost always been the occasion for setting up a permanent Safety Committee ”. We are aware of the added difficulties to be encountered when dealing with an industrial population which is mainly illiterate, but we believe that the success of the movement in J apan is not with- out its significance for India and that considerable advance might be made along these lines, if the idea were adopted in all branches of industry, including railways, with the co-operation of societies and others interested in the welfare of the industrial worker. Safety Provisions of the Law. So far as official regulation is concerned, the provisions of the Factories Act, supplemented by fairly elaborate rules in all provinces, appear to be adequate in most directions. Our attention has been called, however, to some apparent defects. In the first place, the Act does not give sufficient power to secure safety in connection with

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