Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 1995, published 82nd ILC session (1995)

Workmen's Compensation (Occupational Diseases) Convention (Revised), 1934 (No. 42) - Comoros (Ratification: 1978)

In reply to the Committee's previous comments, the Government states that the Federal Assembly has been dissolved following an important political crisis and that, once the new Assembly has been established, it will submit for adoption the draft text amending Order No. 59-73 of 25 April 1959. In view of the fact that it has been raising this matter for several years, the Committee expresses the firm hope that it will be possible for the schedules to the above Order to be modified in the near future in order to bring the national legislation into full conformity with the Convention on the following points:

Article 2. (a) The schedules to Order No. 59-73 of 25 April 1959 contain, in the left-hand column, a restrictive list of pathological manifestations giving rise to entitlement to compensation for poisoning by lead, occupational benzolism and arsenic poisoning, whereas the Convention, which is drafted in general terms on this point, includes all pathological manifestations attributable to the conditions listed in the left-hand column of its schedule, when they are contracted by workers belonging to the corresponding trades, industries or processes that appear in the right-hand column of the same schedules. It should therefore be specified in the left-hand column of the schedules to the above-mentioned legislation that the list of symptoms and pathological manifestations is only indicative, as it is in the right-hand column of the schedules in question. (A possible solution would be to add, for example, at the beginning of the list, under the description of the various conditions, the words "including" or "principal diseases ...".)

(b) Moreover, the schedules to Order No. 59-73 of 25 April 1959 do not mention the following conditions or the activities likely to cause them, which appear in the schedule to the Convention:

(i) poisoning by mercury, its amalgams and compounds and their sequelae;

(ii) poisoning by phosphorus or its compounds, and its sequelae;

(iii) poisoning by the halogen derivatives of hydrocarbons of the aliphatic series;

(iv) anthrax infection;

(v) pathological manifestations due to radiation;

(vi) primary epitheliomatous cancer of the skin (the national legislation mentions only certain forms of dermatosis caused by the use of lubricants in metalwork, whereas the Convention is much broader in scope in this respect).

(c) Lastly, the national legislation covers, in respect of arsenic, only its compounds with oxygen or sulphur and, in respect of benzene, only its homologues, without referring to their nitro- and amino-derivatives.