Companies have a deadline to report serious accidents (or fatalities) to ACT
Employers have 24 hours to report a serious or fatal accident involving a worker, clarified the Authority for Working Conditions (ACT).
"In general economic activity, work-related accidents must be reported in which a worker, a self-employed person working on someone else's premises, a person outside the employment relationship, is fatality or serious physical injury, within twenty-four hours of its occurrence“.
However, there are sectors of economic activity to which specific legislation applies. Therefore, they must be reported:
- on building sites accidents at work resulting in the death or serious injury of a worker, as well as those which are particularly serious from the point of view of safety, provided that they cause physical injury to the worker, in the shortest possible time, not exceeding twenty-four hours;
- on work on board fishing vessels accidents at work resulting in the death or injury of workers or which, notwithstanding the production of personal injury, reveal a particularly serious situation for the safety or health of workers as soon as possible;
- on extractive industries through drilling open-air or underground accidents resulting in the death or serious injury of workers, or which, irrespective of the production of such personal injury, demonstrate a particularly serious situation for the safety or health of workers, within twenty-four hours.
How to communicate?
The accident at work can be reported using the form available on the ACT website or by any other means, "preferably at the decentralised service of the place where the accident at work occurred".
"If the accident has occurred while travelling or en route (in itinere) the communication must be addressed to the decentralised service of the ACT in the area of jurisdiction of the employer's head office".