Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

The state of the rights of the protection of employees working in the RA state and private organizations is seriously concerning in terms of proper fulfillment of obligations undertaken by the RA in international agreements, as well as flawed regulations of domestic legislation.

HCA Vanadzor has previously alarmed about this and presented proposals to make the work of Health and Labor Inspectorate more effective and improve the sphere.  

However, we should record once again that the problems recorded by us have not yet been solved. The Inspectorate operating in the Republic of Armenia has a functional restriction, which is a setback in terms of the protection of employees’ rights in the context of the undertaken international obligations. 

In the conditions of the state of emergency declared in the Republic of Armenia due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have also recorded that the level of the protection of labor rights is also quite low. 

Taking the aforementioned into account, HCA Vanadzor further developed the proposals presented previously and presented them to the RA National Assembly and RA Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. 

In particular, we propose:

✅To comply the powers of the current Inspectorate with the ILO conventions ratified by the the Republic of Armenia and requirements of the Revised European Charter, by including in the functions of the Inspectorate control over adherence to the provisions on the duration of the working day, salary, rest and child labor.  

✅ To adopt checklists necessary to check all the types of economic activity according to risks.

✅To establish legal mechanisms  to ensure that employers properly provide the Inspectorate with information on accidents and occupational diseases in the workplace, and to establish measures for holding liable in case this information is not provided, in particular, amend and supplement Article 260 (2) of the Labor Code (In case of death of an employee at the workplace the employer shall be obliged to notify immediately the insurer, the Police and State Labour Inspectorate of the Republic of Armenia authorized by the Government to hold control over labor security.) by establishing an obligation for the employer to immediately inform the Inspectorate about an accident and an occupational disease, and a possibility to apply liability measures prescribed by law in case the employer does not immediately inform. Accordingly, it is necessary to amend Article 42.1 of the RA Code of Administrative Offences (Non-execution of recommendations of officials of inspection body of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Armenia or impeding checks, examinations and administrative proceedings implemented by the inspection body of the Ministry of Health), by establishing application of liability measures against the employer in case the latter does not provide the mentioned information. 

✅To ensure adequate logistics and staffing of the Inspectorate. 

The full document is available HERE