Zülal Erbil

Apprentice Lawyer

According to regulations, workplaces that have employees less than 50 and are under ‘low hazardous class’ must provide an occupational safety specialist and a workplace doctor being effective from June 01, 2016.

• Occupational Safety Specialist

Engineers, architects and crafts that are certificated in occupational health safety by Ministry of Labor and Social Security are called as ‘occupational safety specialist’. Mentioned specialists should have certificates of A, B or C classed and certificates shall be classified according to level of hazard. In this direction, C certificated specialists may work in low hazardous classes, B certificated ones may work under low hazardous and hazardous classes and A certificated ones may work under low, hazardous and most hazardous classes. Occupational Safety Specialists must work at least 10 (ten) minutes per month per employee to perform their duties in low hazardous classed workplaces.

• Workplace Doctor

Doctors who may be authorized as workplace doctor must have been certificated as well. Workplace doctors must work at least 5 (five) minutes per month per employee to perform their duties in low hazardous classed workplaces.

• Support Member

In addition to abovementioned persons, employers should provide support members to workplaces and support members should be trained. A support member is defined as a person who is authorized specifically in subjects as prevention, protection, discharging, firefighting, first aid etc. related to occupational health and security. In low hazardous classed workplaces, there must be at least one support member for until the number of 50 employees.

Accordingly, low hazardous workplaces shall need to assign a person as occupational safety specialist, a person as workplace doctor and another person for support member. Please note that a person from the workplace may be chosen as support member and may be trained in this way.