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Employees at the mechanical engineering company Trumpf: Occupational safety is exemplary observed here - but that is not the case everywhere
Photo:
Marijan Murat / dpa
The enforcement of occupational safety, particularly with regard to the corona pandemic, apparently often suffers from a lack of staff and vague legal bases.
This is what research by “Buzzfeed” and the ARD magazine “Report Mainz” suggest.
According to this, reported violations of the pandemic-related regulations are sometimes not investigated by the authorities, or only very late.
According to the reports, 50 health and safety authorities responded to a catalog of questions from the media.
Accordingly, 90 percent of them said that they had approached companies about violations of the Corona regulations.
However, in most cases, the companies were only warned verbally or in writing.
Fines were rarely fined, and closings were even less common.
One reason for the lack of control is evidently a lack of staff: more than two thirds of the authorities stated that they had too few staff, and that almost half of them had also transferred officials to other departments in the past few months.
According to the reports, another weak point is that the authorities believe that the legal basis is vague or missing completely in order to effectively enforce the Corona regulations.
For example, if an employer gives reasons that it does not allow home office in his company, these are difficult to refute, the Lower Saxony Ministry of Social Affairs tells the media.
Now the ARD and »Buzzfeed« describe some cases in which deficiencies in Corona occupational safety were reported to the responsible authorities, but they did not remedy the situation, or only after a long delay.
A survey of companies themselves shows that Corona occupational safety does not have a high priority in many companies or is not observed at all.
In January, the federal government had given details of the results of such a survey from last autumn in response to a small request from the left parliamentary group.
Accordingly, measures such as an obligation to wear masks or the installation of protective glasses are often not implemented.
The basic principle was: the smaller the company, the greater the risk.
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