On March 13, Vitebsk / Olga Bogacheva - BELTA /. Over 200 cases of temperature regime violations were detected at enterprises and organizations in the Vitebsk region in February, the Committee for Labour, Employment and Social Protection of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee informed a BELTA correspondent. Monitoring of compliance with comfortable working conditions during low temperatures has been carried out in the Vitebsk region since the end of January. In the past month alone, mobile groups comprising employees of the labour, employment and social protection system, the Vitebsk Regional Centre for Hygiene, Epidemiology and Public Health, and city and district executive committees inspected 1,057 organizations, examined nearly 3,000 buildings, workshops, structures, and facilities, and approximately 11,000 workplaces. During the inspections, 204 instances of temperature regime violations were identified, and response measures were taken for each: 169 orders were issued, 146 administrative offence reports were drawn up, and 129 fines totalling over Br34 million were imposed on the guilty parties. In addition, during the inspections, about 3.2 thousand other violations were detected, including 18 people being at the workplace while intoxicated. State labour inspectors were also involved in the work of mobile groups, noted Sergey Anufriev, First Deputy Head of the Vitebsk Regional Department of the State Labour Inspectorate Department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection. With their direct participation, 1.2 thousand violations were identified and recommended for elimination. Directly at the time of the inspection, officials of the organizations took measures for the immediate elimination of 923 violations. Based on the results of workplace surveys and worker examinations, 65 cases of failure to provide workers with personal protective equipment (PPE) and 66 cases of non-use of PPE by the workers themselves were identified. For each of these cases, and in instances where such violations could not be rectified in the presence of mobile group members, state labour inspectors provided recommendations to employers to remove the violating workers from the work process – 65 workers were removed. Sergey Anufriev added that during the monitoring, production safety issues were also addressed. As a result of identifying equipment that did not meet safety requirements, state labour inspectors prohibited the performance of 17 types of work and the operation of 42 units of equipment. -0-

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