From the review above, there are many international or national (regional) regulations concerning workers‟ OSH in HK, even though most do not use the term “occupational safety and health” explicitly. As mentioned previously, the current review is not exhaustive due to the broad definition of OSH, therefore it does not cover all legislation which might be indirectly relevant to OSH in HK, for example: employment laws, factories safety laws, etc. However, the legislation and policies that concern the content of teachers‟ work have been reviewed.
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The review of the background of OSH legislation underlines HK OSH culture that HK people only react to problems rather than prevent the problems proactively. New legislation was reacting to the vicarious situations of the work environment, and improvement of the current work environment or promoting a safe and healthy work environment was of least concern. Initiatives of new OSH legislation usually began with some high profile serious occupational accidents or high accident rates. Policy makers usually use the records of accidents rates in drafting legislation. The numbers and nature of accidents determined to a large extent whether laws would be successfully enacted in Legislative Council. Some research showed that this reactive tendency to problems might be related to cultures (e.g. Bugental, et al. 2006). However, the results also indicated the lack of awareness in the relationships of psychosocial hazards in the work environment and ill health (e.g. Maina et al., 2009).In fact, the legislation is unclear for effective implementation; as can be seen from the review by the modified WHO checklist, there is some OSH legislation concerning the rights and responsibilities of different bodies in terms of OSH; however, the weakness lies in the fact that the legislation does not always explicitly define all key terms and information. For example, there is no definition of “health” in OSHO (Cap 509) PART II. If “health” was defined as the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being in the legislation, the employers would also have responsibilities to ensure the social well-being but not only physical and mental health conditions of all employees.
The review further highlights the problem of ambiguity in some other parts of the legislation; for example, there is a lack of detail on OSH services in the legislation and the responsibilities of different bodies. This might be due to the fact that the government may want to be more flexible in terms of law enforcement and implementation. However, practical issues may arise due to the ambiguity of the legislation; for instance, there is no regulation or ordinance written on when and how often the inspectors should conduct regular inspections in schools. Also, with reasonable excuses, non-compliance of employers is covered through flexibility of legislation. These “straight and simple” regulations are more likely for the employers to gain favour with the legislature. In fact, Hong Kong is not an exception in the issue of key terms
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clarifications in the policies. Previous policy evaluations also find that some policies (e.g. Framework Directive 89/391/EEC on Safety and Health of Workers at Work) were lack of practical and operational translation of the terms. The lack of specificity will also lead to ambiguity and confusion in the implementation of legislation.Moreover, the government has established some bodies to help put all legislation in practice: the legislation enforcement, education and publicity work by the OSHB of the Labour
Department are examples. Although the aims and objectives of their work seem promising, there are no official records showing the injury, occupational diseases and accident rates of schools. Evidence of the work on school inspections, education and publicity by different government bodies is also neglected. Previous research found that the availability of guidance, education, information and tools were important for implementing systematic psychosocial risk assessment (e.g. Natali et al., 2008). The neglect of evidence in implementation in HK reflects a doubtful commitment among the Government bodies in implementing OSH policy in schools. This issue of lack of commitment is directly widening the gap between policy and practice, in which previous literature (Levi, 2005) demonstrated as a contribution to the failure of policy initiatives. School specific records should be officially published to increase school stakeholders‟ awareness of OSH in schools.
Even though there are OSH guidelines designed for the teachers and schools, they focus mainly on traditional occupational safety issues. It is widely recognised that psychosocial risks are the major challenges of OSH, especially in a workforce with less physical demands (e.g. Sauter & Murphy, 1990; European Agency for Health and Safety at Work, 2007; Papdopoulos, et al., 2010). There is also considerable research attesting that the OSH challenges of teachers lie in the psychosocial work environment (Peeters & Rutte, 2005). The published guidelines are inappropriate by over-emphasising teachers‟ safety issues at work, but neglecting the importance of psychosocial risk management in schools. Even though there is a brief illustration of stress in the guidelines, it is too brief and inadequate. OSH guidance for schools should be more comprehensive and practical, in order to meet the needs and concerns of HK teachers.