Abstract—Occupational Safety and Health Committees
(OSHC) were owing to a legislative mandate via section 30 of
the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 (OSHA 1994)
required to be established in workplaces with 40 or more
employees. They were a manifestation of employee involvement
and joint commitment of employer and employee; the twin
pillars of the workplace occupational safety and health
self-regulatory system that was attributed to the Roben’s
Report of 1972 issued in the United Kingdom. The
self-regulatory approach was adopted in Malaysia to replace
the former approach that was dependent upon prescriptive
based regulations and a command and control form of
enforcement on the part of the government enforcement agency
now known as the Department of Occupational Safety and
Health (DOSH). To understand the efficacy of the
self-regulatory system in so far as it relates to manufacturing
firms in Malaysia, survey data from 231 manufacturing firms
were empirically studied. The findings indicate that in terms of
the extent of executing legislatively prescribed functions in
general, OSHCs fall on a medium scale indicative of the
self-regulatory system functioning at an average level. However,
functioning in these areas were discovered to be lagging: access
to reports provided by external experts, access to safety audits,
collect general information on safety and health issues, assist
employer in safety and health competitions, carry out studies on
safety and health at the place of work, form sub-committee to
assist in function, access to internal and external experts in
determining safety and health issues and seeking intervention of
DOSH when non implementation of OSHC recommendation
was unjustified.
Index Terms—Employee Involvement, Manufacturing Firms,
Occupational Safety And Health Committees, Self-Regulation.
U. K. Farouk is with Multimedia University, 61000 Cyberjaya, Malaysia
(e-mail: ummu@ mmu.edu.my).
S. Richardson is with Multimedia University, 61000 Cyberjaya, Malaysia
(e-mail:s.richardson@mmu.edu.my).
A. J. S. Santhapparaj was with Multimedia University, 61000 Cyberjaya,
Malaysia. He passed away after this paper was submitted for review.
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Cite:Ummu Kolsome Farouk, Stanley Richardson, and Arul Jeganathan Solucis Santhapparaj, "Occupational Safety and Health Committees: How Fares the Pulse of the Self-Regulatory System in Malaysian Manufacturing Firms?," International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance vol.2, no.5, pp. 412-418, 2011.