Personal Protective Equipment

What personal protective equipment is

Personal protective equipment consists of items that a worker wears or carries to be protected from a hazard that remains in the work after the other measures have been taken. Examples are helmets, gloves, protective glasses, hearing protectors, respiratory masks, safety shoes and fall arrest harnesses. The Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) uses the phrase «أدوات الوقاية الشخصية» (personal protection tools, in our rendering) in Article 123, and it neither defines the equipment nor lists its types.

Issue, training and records fall to employers and human resources officers, and the workers who receive the equipment are the people it protects. The duties in Articles 121 to 126 of the Labor Law are set out under occupational health and safety. This term is about the duty on equipment within them.

What the Labor Law requires of an employer on personal protective equipment

Article 123 of the Labor Law requires the employer to inform the worker, before the worker starts work, of the hazards of the occupation, and to oblige the worker to use the protective means prescribed for it. In a second clause it adds that the employer must provide suitable personal protective equipment for the workers and train them to use it. That makes four duties:

• Informing about hazards. The worker is told of the hazards of the occupation before starting work.
• Obliging use of the means. The worker is required to use the protective means prescribed for that occupation.
• Providing. The establishment provides suitable personal protective equipment for the workers.
• Training. The workers are trained to use that equipment.

The time limit “before starting work” appears in the first clause only, so it governs the duty to inform and the duty to oblige. Providing and training come in a second clause with no time limit, and they are addressed to “the workers” collectively. The duty to provide and train therefore runs through the work of the establishment, and it is not a step completed once at hiring. That reading is ours.

What the worker owes in return

Article 124 of the Labor Law states the other side. The worker must use the protective means assigned to each operation, look after them, and carry out the instructions laid down to protect the worker’s health and guard against injury and disease. The worker must also refrain from any act or omission that results in those instructions not being carried out, or in the misuse or disabling of the means provided to protect the workplace and the health and safety of colleagues. The duty is shared: the establishment provides and trains, and the worker uses and looks after.

Breach of the worker’s duty has a consequence in item 2 of Article 80 of the Labor Law. It allows the employer to terminate the contract without an award, notice or compensation if the worker deliberately fails to observe the safety instructions that the employer has announced in a visible place, despite a written warning. The opening of Article 80 of the Labor Law adds that the worker must be given the opportunity to state the reasons for objecting to the termination. Using this item therefore presupposes four things: deliberate failure to observe the instructions, instructions announced in a visible place, an earlier written warning, and an opportunity for the worker to object. Article 122 of the Labor Law requires the employer to announce the safety instructions in a visible place in Arabic, and in another language the workers understand where needed, so an establishment that has not announced them cannot rely on this item.

Who bears the cost of personal protective equipment

Article 122 of the Labor Law ends with a provision on cost: the employer may not charge the workers, or deduct from their wages, any sum for providing this protection. The provision of the equipment rests on the employer under Article 123 of the Labor Law, which says that the employer must provide it. Charging a worker for the price of equipment that the law requires the employer to provide would not fit with either text. That is our inference from two adjacent articles, and neither article states a rule on the price of personal equipment.

The effect of the duty on an establishment’s cost can be seen with figures that are assumed and are not market prices. An establishment has 25 workers, and each needs a helmet at SAR 40, gloves at SAR 30, protective glasses at SAR 25 and safety shoes at SAR 150. One worker’s set costs 40 + 30 + 25 + 150 = SAR 245, and the sets for 25 workers cost 25 × 245 = SAR 6,125. If the gloves and glasses are replaced twice a year, that adds 25 × 2 × (30 + 25) = SAR 2,750. On the reading of the two texts above, these sums fall on the establishment, and they fall in the safety budget.

How the Labor Law uses protection terms without defining them

Two adjacent phrases appear in Article 123 of the Labor Law: «وسائل الوقاية المقررة» (the prescribed means of protection) for the occupation, and «أدوات الوقاية الشخصية المناسبة» (suitable personal protection tools), while Article 124 of the Labor Law adds a third, «الوسائل الوقائية المخصصة لكل عملية» (the protective means assigned to each operation). The Labor Law defines none of them and draws no line between them. The natural reading is that personal equipment is one kind of protective means, the kind a worker wears or carries, and that the means are wider and include what is placed at the point of work itself, such as a guard that covers a dangerous part of a machine. That reading is ours, and the text does not state it.

The reading has a practical effect. The duty to oblige in the first clause concerns the protective means prescribed for the occupation as a whole, while the duty to provide and train in the second clause concerns personal equipment. An establishment that covers a machine with a guard and issues nothing to its operator has not necessarily met the second duty, because the guard does not replace equipment that the worker wears when the hazard remains.

Where personal protective equipment sits in prevention

Equipment is the last measure to turn to and not the first to buy. The order set out in occupational safety practice starts by removing the hazard, then replacing it with something less harmful, then controlling it by engineering and then by administrative measures, and personal protective equipment comes after those. The procedural guide to the occupational fitness regulation (لائحة فحوصات اللياقة المهنية) calls this arrangement the hierarchical control system (نظام السيطرة التسلسلي) and does not list its levels, so the sequence of levels given here comes from occupational practice and not from a text. How a hazard is identified before the measure to meet it is chosen is covered under occupational risk assessment.

The reason for the order is that equipment protects the wearer only while it is worn, and worn correctly, and it does not remove the hazard itself. If it is taken off, or does not fit its wearer, the whole hazard returns. Handing equipment over is therefore not enough. The establishment follows up its use. A safety committee can be given that task where one exists, and a health and safety officer can carry out the daily work where one has been appointed.

How personal protective equipment differs from occupational fitness examination

Equipment prevents part of the harm from reaching the worker, while a medical examination detects what has reached the worker. The procedural guide to the occupational fitness regulation, issued under Ministerial Decision 33232, bars establishments from using the fitness examination as a substitute for applying preventive controls, and it describes the medical examination as a means of monitoring and not of prevention. An establishment that examines its workers and issues nothing to protect them has chosen monitoring in place of prevention. The certificate that results from the examination is described under health certificate.

What records show that equipment was issued

No particular register or form is named in Article 123 of the Labor Law, and in the sources we reviewed, we found no provision in the Labor Law that requires issue to be documented. The duties to provide and to train fall on the employer, however, so it helps the employer to hold evidence that it did both. The following records would serve. This is our practical recommendation and not a statutory requirement:

• The issue date, the type of item and its size. Equipment that does not fit cannot do its work.
• The training date and subject. The words “training them to use it” in Article 123 of the Labor Law call for this.
• The worker’s acknowledgement of receipt. It shows that the item reached the worker.
• The replacement date and the reason. Damage and age take an item out of service.

The establishment can keep this record with the worker’s other documents. If an injury occurs, the rules on injuries are explained under work injury.

When equipment and training are reviewed

Article 122 of the Labor Law makes the duty to take the necessary precautions to protect workers from hazards, from diseases arising from the work and from the machinery used a standing duty, so when the hazard changes, the suitable equipment changes too. Reasonable occasions for review, which are again our recommendation, are the arrival of a new machine, a change of task, a worker’s move to another place of work, and an accident or a near miss. On each of them the establishment asks whether what the worker wears suits the new hazard and whether the worker has been trained on the new item.

How the Labor Law handles equipment specification

The Labor Law does not fix the types of equipment for each occupation, their specifications, their service life or the number of times they are replaced. Article 121 of the Labor Law refers the rules, procedures and levels of protection, safety and occupational health to a decision of the Minister, and in the sources we reviewed we did not find that decision. Someone who wants to know what equipment an occupation such as welding, work at height or handling chemicals needs will not find it in the text of the Labor Law, and a list that the Labor Law does not contain must not be attributed to it.

Article 123 of the Labor Law also does not say what “suitable” means in the phrase “suitable for the workers”. The nearest basis for judging it is the result of a risk assessment for each task, which is work for the establishment and not text of the law. Four checks may be applied, and they are our practical recommendation:

• Match to the hazard. The item is aimed at the hazard the assessment identified, and dust glasses do not protect against a chemical splash.
• Fit to the wearer. The size suits the worker, and the item works with the other items the worker wears.
• Condition. It is inspected before use and replaced when damaged.
• Training in its use. The worker knows how to put it on, when to replace it and what it does not protect against.

The last of these is what Article 123 of the Labor Law means by training workers in use, since an item that its wearer cannot use properly does not do its work, however good its quality.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.