Regulatory & Compliance Notices

Dear Industry Partner, are you confident your organization can demonstrate compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of Trinidad and Tobago?

Many contractors operating across Trinidad and Tobago have invested significant corporate resources over the years into developing Health, Safety, and Environmental (HSE) management systems through frameworks like the Safe TO Work (STOW) Programme or ISO.

The High Stakes of Non-Compliance

Failing to maintain a verifiable, effective occupational safety and health system exposes employers, company directors, managers, and supervisors to severe statutory, financial, and personal liabilities. Under the OSH Act, prescribed penalties include:

• Critical Incidents: Where a worker suffers death, critical injury, or an occupational disease due to a contravention of the Act, employers face fines of TT$100,000 or an amount equivalent to three years' pay of the affected worker—whichever is greater—in addition to civil damages.
• Personal Prosecution: Directors, Managers, and Company Officers are all explicitly subject to personal legal proceedings where offences occur with their consent, connivance, or neglect.
• Daily Accruing Fines: Additional penalties of up to TT$10,000 per day apply where a formal court order to remedy an OSH contravention is not complied with.
• General Violations: Fines up to TT$20,000 apply for summary offences where no specific penalty is explicitly prescribed.

Beyond direct court penalties, non-compliant organizations face devastating commercial fallout, including severe civil compensation claims, spiked insurance premiums, contractual disputes, project delays, client prequalification failures, and irreversible reputational damage.