Employers complain about the lack of certificates of personal protective equipment
Employers complained to the government of a deficiency of certifying bodies that arose after the reform of their activities, and the inability to provide employees in harmful and hazardous industries with mandatory personal protective equipment (PPE). In the initiated reform of the Federal Correspondence, data is given from which it follows that certification and laboratories in the country are enough, and the share of invalid certificates for PPEs recognized as invalid is 1%. Employers insist that the problem still exists and the capacities of all these bodies are not enough to meet the demand of business for their services.
The problem of the deficit of organizations issuing certificates for personal protective equipment, which companies are required to provide employees employed in harmful and hazardous industries, employers raised in a letter (Kommersant) the head of the RSPP Alexander Shokhin Tatyana Golikova.
Let us explain that earlier Rosakcreditation achieved tightening control over the activities of certification bodies, which ultimately removed from the market to 3 thousand certification centers. The mechanism of operational recall of certificates and declarations of conformity of products was also introduced, since the documents issued by liquidated centers continued to operate. The head of the Public Council in Rosakcreditation, Marina Bludyan, believes that it was precisely the tightening of the requirements for certifying bodies with the subsequent reduction in their number that made it possible to solve the problem of bribes in the industry and achieve a transparent process of issuing certificates of conformity.
However, as noted in the letter of the RSPP, as a result of the reform, “there was a critical situation with mass suspension and cancellation of certificates of compliance with PPE, as well as with the exclusion of accredited persons from the national part of the Rosakcreditation Register performing work on confirmation of conformity within the framework of the technical regulation of the Customs Union”.
The RSPP, acute deficiency of both certification bodies and testing laboratories, performing work on mandatory certification of PPE, as well as professional experts, noted.
According to Rosakkreditation, in 2024, according to the results of the checks, the service suspended 1.2 thousand certificates for products. Among those recognized as invalid, according to the RSPP, there were also certificates for PPE: overalls, protective helmets, respiratory protection and eyes and so on.
“When a PPE manufacturer comes and brings a certificate, the company has no obligation to check it,” says Valery Korzh, the head of the RSPP labor protection group. “At the same time, administrative and even criminal liability can threaten it if the pleasant certificate is invalid. We want a simple and understandable feedback system. ”
Rosakcreditation leads numbers that should show that the raised problem of acute does not look.
According to Kommersant in the service, over the past three years, 3155 certificates of conformity have been issued and have been valid at the PPE, and only 28, that is, less than 1%were invalid. Now there are 22 products for certification of products that have the right to assess the conformity of PPE, in which 134 experts are occupied in total. 34 accredited laboratories are also engaged in PPE tests.
The head of the PPE Association Vladimir Kotov notes that the capacities of all these organs and laboratories are still not enough to meet the demand for their services. “Not all of the accredited laboratories and bodies can evaluate all important indicators confirming the protective properties of PPE. For example, it is impossible to confirm the conformity of the “Signal Clothing Signal” products due to the lack of an indicator of “sprinkling” in the field of accreditation of certification and laboratories, ”says Mr. Kotov. Another example: only the Laboratory of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Research Institute of Labor Medicine named after Academician N.F. Mezmerov” can conduct research on the “thermal insulation” indicator. “That is, in Russia, where the cold period lasts five months, only one laboratory for thousands of production. Because of this, many-month-old queues arise for research, ”he notes.
According to Kommersant, on Friday, March 28, the issue of deficiency of certificates of conformity will be discussed at a monthly meeting of the Russian tripartite commission with the participation and representatives of Rosakcreditation.
