EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 69 of 120

Correct — C, (c) List of Notifiable Diseases. The Factories Act, 1948 carries three schedules, and the Third is headed List of Notifiable Diseases. It is expressly referred to in sections 89 and 90 of the Act. Section 89, headed Notice of certain diseases, provides that where any worker in a factory contracts a disease specified in the Third Schedule, the manager must send notice to the prescribed authorities in the prescribed form and within the prescribed time; that a medical practitioner attending such a person must without delay report the matter to the Chief Inspector, with a penalty for failing to do so; and that the Central Government may add to the Third Schedule by notification. Section 90 then allows the Government to appoint a competent person to enquire into the case. The word that decides the question is notifiable. A notifiable disease is one whose occurrence must be reported to a public authority, and the whole point of the Third Schedule is to define the trigger for that duty of notice, which is why the list sits in a schedule rather than in the body of the Act — it can be enlarged by notification as new industrial hazards are recognised, without amending the statute. The diseases on it are the classic industrial ones: lead, phosphorus, mercury, manganese and arsenic poisoning, anthrax, silicosis, asbestosis, byssinosis, occupational cancer, noise-induced hearing loss and the effects of ionising radiation among them. In substance these are occupational diseases, which is what makes the second option so attractive, but the Act's own heading names them by the legal duty they create and not by their cause.

• (a)List of Occupational Hazards — No schedule of the Factories Act, 1948 carries this heading, and no provision of the Act uses the phrase as a term of art. The wording is loose in a way that statutory drafting rarely is: a hazard is a source of danger, not a thing that can be listed and made the subject of a duty, whereas the Act's schedules each attach to a specific obligation — the First to the definition of a hazardous process, the Second to permissible exposure limits, the Third to the duty of notice. The option is included as a plausible-sounding phrase for a candidate working from a general sense of what a safety statute contains rather than from the Act itself. When a question names a schedule by number, answer it by recalling what obligation the schedule serves; a heading that corresponds to no obligation is almost always invented.
• (b)List of Occupational Diseases — This is the serious distractor, and it is wrong in a precise and instructive way, because that heading belongs to a different statute. The Third Schedule to the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 is headed List of Occupational Diseases, and it is divided into parts according to the employment in which the disease is contracted; contracting a listed disease in the corresponding employment is deemed to be an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment, which is what founds a claim to compensation. So both Acts have a Third Schedule about diseases, and they do different work: the Factories Act list creates a duty to notify the authorities, while the Employees' Compensation Act list creates an entitlement to be compensated. Note the coincidence of the numbering, which is exactly what a setter builds an option on, and fix each schedule to the obligation it serves rather than to its number alone.
• (d)List of Industries Involving Hazardous Processes — This is a real list in the same Act, but it is the First Schedule, not the Third. It is referred to in the definition of a hazardous process in section 2(cb), and it names the industries — petroleum, pesticides, fertilisers, chlorine and other chemicals, asbestos, rubber, paper, and many more — whose processes bring a factory within the special regime the Act applies to them. That regime is Chapter IV-A, sections 41A to 41H, which was inserted along with the First and Second Schedules by the amending Act of 1987 in the aftermath of the Bhopal gas disaster; it requires site appraisal committees, compulsory disclosure of information by the occupier, medical examinations, and workers' participation in safety management. The Second Schedule, referred to in section 41F, sets permissible levels of certain chemical substances in the work environment. Learning the three schedules in order — hazardous industries, permissible chemical levels, notifiable diseases — disposes of this whole family of questions.

The Factories Act, 1948 regulates health, safety, welfare, working hours and employment conditions in factories, and it uses schedules to hold lists that must be capable of amendment without a fresh statute. There are three. The First Schedule lists industries involving hazardous processes and is tied to the definition in section 2(cb). The Second Schedule sets permissible levels of certain chemical substances in the work environment and is tied to section 41F. The Third Schedule lists notifiable diseases and is tied to sections 89 and 90, which impose the duty to give notice when a worker contracts one of them and allow an official enquiry into the case. The first two schedules and the whole of Chapter IV-A on hazardous processes were inserted by the amending Act of 1987, passed after the Bhopal gas disaster of December 1984, which is why the Act's treatment of chemical hazards is so much more elaborate than its original scheme. Notification duties of this kind run in parallel with the accident notice required by section 88, and both feed the factory inspectorate's power to investigate. The Act has since been subsumed, along with the Mines Act, 1952, the Contract Labour Act, 1970 and the construction workers legislation, into the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

Questions on schedules are a staple of this paper's labour law block because they can be set with complete precision and cannot be reasoned around. The technique that works is to attach each schedule to the section that refers to it, since the section explains what the list is for and the purpose fixes the heading. Here the Third Schedule exists so that section 89 can say which diseases must be notified, and once that link is held, the heading follows: a list that triggers a duty of notice is a list of notifiable diseases. The item also rewards a habit of keeping statutes apart when they use similar language. Two Acts in this syllabus have a Third Schedule dealing with diseases — the Factories Act, 1948 and the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 — and the correct answer to a schedule question depends entirely on which Act is named in the stem. For an Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner the distinction is not academic, since one list governs reporting to the inspectorate and the other governs a workman's entitlement to compensation, and confusing them means confusing a regulatory duty with a benefit claim.

• The Third Schedule to the Factories Act, 1948 is headed List of Notifiable Diseases and is referred to in sections 89 and 90; section 89 requires the manager to give notice when a worker contracts a listed disease and requires the attending medical practitioner to report it to the Chief Inspector.
• The Central Government may add to the Third Schedule by notification, which is why the list of notifiable diseases sits in a schedule rather than in the body of the Act, and section 90 allows an official enquiry into a notified case.
• The diseases listed include lead, phosphorus, mercury, manganese and arsenic poisoning, anthrax, silicosis, asbestosis, byssinosis, occupational cancer, noise-induced hearing loss and the effects of ionising radiation.
• The First Schedule to the same Act lists industries involving hazardous processes and is referred to in the definition of hazardous process in section 2(cb); the Second Schedule sets permissible levels of certain chemical substances in the work environment and is referred to in section 41F.
• Chapter IV-A on hazardous processes, sections 41A to 41H, together with the First and Second Schedules, was inserted by the Factories (Amendment) Act, 1987 following the Bhopal gas disaster of December 1984.
• The heading List of Occupational Diseases belongs to the Third Schedule of the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923, where contracting a listed disease in the corresponding employment is treated as an injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment for the purposes of compensation.

• Choosing List of Occupational Diseases because the diseases in the Third Schedule really are occupational; the Act's own heading names the duty of notice, and the occupational diseases heading belongs to the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923
• Mixing up the schedules by number; the First Schedule lists hazardous industries, the Second sets permissible chemical exposure levels and the Third lists notifiable diseases
• Forgetting that two statutes in this syllabus each have a Third Schedule about diseases, so the answer depends entirely on which Act the stem names
• Assuming the schedule can only be changed by amending the Act; the Central Government may add to the list of notifiable diseases by notification
• Treating the hazardous-process provisions as part of the original 1948 scheme; Chapter IV-A and the first two schedules were inserted by the amending Act of 1987 after the Bhopal disaster

This paper asks the Factories Act repeatedly and prefers provisions that carry a number or a name: the contents of a schedule, the threshold of workers that makes a place a factory, the hours beyond which overtime is payable, the size at which a canteen or a creche or an ambulance room becomes compulsory, and the officer on whom a duty falls. Schedule questions in particular are set as a straight four-way choice among plausible list headings, one of which is the Act's own, one of which belongs to a neighbouring statute, and two of which are invented. The reliable preparation is to memorise the schedules of the two or three statutes most often examined together with the section each is referred to in, because the section number is what distinguishes a genuine heading from a plausible one and is also what makes the answer defensible.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The First Schedule to the Factories Act, 1948 contains which one of the following?

  • (a)The list of notifiable diseases
  • (b)The list of industries involving hazardous processes
  • (c)Permissible levels of certain chemical substances in the work environment
  • (d)The list of welfare amenities to be provided by the occupier

  Answer(b) The list of industries involving hazardous processes — the First Schedule is referred to in the definition of hazardous process in section 2(cb) and brings the industries it names within the special regime of Chapter IV-A. The permissible levels of chemical substances form the Second Schedule, referred to in section 41F, and the notifiable diseases form the Third Schedule, referred to in sections 89 and 90; welfare amenities are dealt with in the body of the Act, not in a schedule.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Factories Act, 1948, the duty to send notice when a worker contracts a disease specified in the Third Schedule falls, in the first place, on

  • (a)the manager of the factory
  • (b)the Chief Inspector of Factories
  • (c)the worker himself
  • (d)the certifying surgeon

  Answer(a) the manager of the factory — section 89 requires the manager to send notice to the prescribed authorities in the prescribed form and within the prescribed time when a worker in the factory contracts a listed disease, and separately requires any medical practitioner attending such a person to report the case to the Chief Inspector, on pain of penalty. The Chief Inspector receives the information rather than originating it, and section 90 then allows an enquiry into the case to be ordered.