OSHA Mauritius — Workplace Safety Compliance

The Occupational Safety and Health Act 2005 (OSHA 2005), administered by the Ministry of Labour, Human Resource Development and Training, sets the baseline duties for every employer operating in Mauritius. The Act is supplemented by regulations covering specific hazards (manual handling, hazardous substances, working at height, confined spaces, etc.) and aligns to a large extent with ILO conventions and ISO 45001.

An employer's headline duties are:

• Provide a safe place of work — physical environment, equipment, procedures.
• Provide information, instruction, training and supervision.
• Maintain safe systems of work — written, communicated, reviewed.
• Risk-assess all hazardous activities and document the assessments.
• Report certain accidents, dangerous occurrences and occupational diseases.

A defensible risk assessment follows the structure familiar from ISO 45001 / ISO 31000:

• Identify hazards — physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic, psychosocial.
• Identify who can be harmed — employees, contractors, visitors, the public.
• Evaluate the risk — likelihood × severity, before and after existing controls.
• Decide on additional controls — applying the hierarchy of controls (eliminate, substitute, engineer, administer, PPE).
• Record findings and assign owners with deadlines.
• Review annually and after incidents, near-misses, layout changes or new equipment.

Workplaces above the size threshold set out in the regulations must establish a Safety and Health Committee with employer and employee representation. The committee meets at defined intervals, reviews risk assessments, accident statistics and corrective action progress. Minutes must be kept and made available to inspectors. Where a committee is not required, a documented consultation arrangement should still exist.

Certain incidents must be reported to the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Labour and recorded in the workplace accident register:

• Fatal or serious accidents at work.
• Dangerous occurrences (collapses, structural failures, releases, fires, explosions).
• Occupational diseases identified under the regulations.

Failure to report is itself an offence. A clear internal reporting workflow, with the escalation criteria printed and visible, is the single best mitigation.

• Induction at start of employment, covering hazards relevant to the role.
• Task-specific training for high-risk activities (working at height, machinery, hazardous substances, confined spaces, electrical work).
• Refreshers on a defined cadence — annually for high-risk roles is a reasonable default.
• Records kept per employee, showing what training was delivered, when, and by whom.

OSHA 2005 sets the legal floor. ISO 45001 — the international occupational health and safety management system standard — gives you a structured, auditable management system on top of that floor. For Mauritian organisations operating across multiple sites, working with international clients, or in higher-risk sectors (manufacturing, construction, utilities), ISO 45001 is the obvious next step. It is also closely aligned with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 so the three can be integrated.

• Inventory current safety documents and find the gaps.
• Run a workplace risk assessment using the structure above.
• Set up or refresh the Safety and Health Committee where required.
• Build the incident reporting and investigation workflow.
• Train the workforce on what changed.
• Schedule an annual internal OSH audit.