Gyeonggi Province Proposes Amendment to Fire Services Act Mandating Private Workplace Incident Reporting

[Suwon Ilbo= Reporter Park No-hun] Gyeonggi Province is moving to establish legal grounds to prevent malpractices such as private companies handling accidents on their own without reporting to fire authorities.

The province submitted an amended bill to the Fire Services Act to the National Fire Agency on the 15th, mandating that business operators are obligated to report accidents at private worksites when they occur.

This is a measure to prevent malpractices such as private companies handling accidents internally before belatedly reporting to fire authorities, as seen in incidents including the carbon dioxide leak at Samsung Electronics' Giheung plant last year, the fall accident at the Icheon SK Hynix construction site in May, and the assault incident at the Hanam Hoban Verdium construction site in August.

The current Article 19 of the Fire Services Act stipulates that "any person who discovers a fire scene or a scene requiring rescue or first aid services shall immediately notify the fire department, fire station, or relevant administrative agency of the situation at the scene."
However, since the mandatory reporter is specified as "a person who discovers the accident scene," side effects have occurred where private company officials, upon learning of an accident, refuse to report it, citing reasons such as "I did not directly witness the scene."

To address this, the province added "related parties who become aware of the occurrence of an accident" to the mandatory reporters in the amended bill, ensuring that private company officials who learn of an accident are obligated to report it.
Additionally, related parties who, without justifiable cause, fail to notify or obstruct notification of fire, rescue, first aid, or other emergency situations to the fire department will be subject to an administrative fine of 30 million won.
The province expects that if the amended bill passes, private worksites will be prevented from resorting to malpractices such as not immediately calling 119 upon accident occurrence and instead contacting their internal fire brigades and contractors to handle accidents independently, citing reasons such as increased industrial accident insurance premiums and damage to corporate image.

An official from the Gyeonggi Provincial Fire and Disaster Management Headquarters stated, "If the mandatory 119 reporting requirement is implemented, it is expected that large-scale firefighting resources can be mobilized through the wide-area dispatch system, allowing us to preemptively block accidents from escalating into major disasters," and added, "We hope that the amendment to the Fire Services Act will pass and resolve the malpractices of private companies handling accidents on their own."