Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2010, published 100th ILC session (2011)

Radiation Protection Convention, 1960 (No. 115) - Slovakia (Ratification: 1993)

Further to its observation the Committee requests the Government to provide additional information on the following points.

Article 7(2) of the Convention. Prohibition against employing young persons under 16 in work involving exposure to radiation. With reference to its previous comment the Committee notes the information provided by the Government in its report that section 13 of Regulation No. 345/2006, Coll. provides that the dose limits for apprentices and students “until the calendar year in which they reach the age of sixteen years” shall be the same as the limits set for members of the public in section 15. In the view of the Committee, this provision appears to fall short of a prohibition against employing young persons under 16 in work involving exposure to radiation as required by this provision of the Convention. The Committee once again requests the Government to provide further information on how full effect is given, in law and in practice, to this provision of the Convention.

Article 14. Alternative employment or other measures offered for maintaining income where continued assignment to work involving exposure is medically inadvisable. With reference to its previous comment, the Committee notes with interest that section 125 of the Labour Code regarding wages for performance of other work provides, inter alia, that workers transferred to other work due to a risk of contracting an occupational disease are entitled to supplementary pay at least to the level of the average earnings they received before the transfer if such transfer would cause the workers to receive a lower salary. Such supplementary pay is payable up to a maximum period of 12 consecutive months from the day of the transfer. The Committee requests the Government to indicate what measures are offered to transferred workers after the expiry of the 12-month period referred to in section 125 of the Labour Code.

Exceptional exposure of workers in emergency situations. The Committee notes the information provided in response to its previous comments that section 14 of Regulation No. 345/2006 regulates the exceptional circumstances in which the exposure to radiation in excess of the dose limits for workers set in section 11 of the same Regulation shall be authorized. It is provided that: (a) such exposure must be for a limited period and undertaken only by volunteer workers; (b) activities must be carried out in certain working areas; and (c) the exposure limits authorized may not exceed double the dose limits for workers set in section 11 of the Regulation. With reference thereto the Committee wishes to draw the Government’s attention to paragraphs 17, and 21–22 of its 1992 general observation under this Convention and the notion of “planned special exposure” as a means of protection for emergency work was largely abandoned by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in 1990. With reference to its previous comment, the Committee reiterates its request to the Government to indicate measures taken or envisaged in order to ensure compliance with the ICRP recommendation referred to in its 1992 general observation under the Convention in this respect.