Abstract:

The Law No. 6331 on Occupational Health and Safety initiated a new era in Turkey. Among the most important innovations brought about were undoubtedly taking all workplaces into the scope of the Law regardless of the number of employees and assigning the tasks of occupational health and safety to professionals such as occupational safety experts (OSE) and on-site doctors. In terms of the efficiency of occupational health and safety services, the Law attends great importance to the process of becoming an OSE and requires special training and achievement in the central exam. The excessive number of workplaces and the fact that they are small scaled and that there are no adequate numbers of OSE present have caused a significant problem in putting the Law into practice; therefore, effective dates for some provisions were suspended. While this suspension was quite incisive; the changes made in the requirements of becoming OSE specified in the first form of the Law in order to make up for the need for OSE were misleading. In particular, allowing thousands of people to become OSE without asking for any professional experience; but just through an exam depending on their undergraduate education and the time of insurance led to deviations from the objectives expected from the Law No. 6331.

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