Prevention
Legal structuring of the occupational health and safety system required by Law 29783, so that the Peruvian entity can show what it does to prevent harm and respond properly when an incident occurs.
Occupational health and safety is the area of Peruvian employment law where exposure escalates fastest. A gap in safety documentation is an administrative infringement; the same gap after a serious accident can lead to the temporary closure of a workplace and, in qualified cases, to criminal proceedings against those responsible. For a foreign-owned company, the challenge is that global EHS standards, however demanding, are not organized the way Peruvian law expects them to be documented.
Law 29783, the Occupational Health and Safety Law, and its regulations require every employer to operate a safety management system. The main obligations depend on size: employers with 20 or more employees need a joint safety committee and written internal safety rules; smaller employers need a safety supervisor. All employers must identify hazards and assess risks at least once a year or when conditions change, provide at least four safety training sessions a year, carry out occupational medical examinations and keep specified registers. Fatal accidents must be reported to the MTPE (the Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion) within 24 hours.
SUNAFIL, Peru’s national labor inspection authority, treats safety as a priority. After a fatal accident an inspector can order temporary closure of the affected area, and fines for certain infringements linked to death or permanent disability are calculated on the entire workforce rather than on the workers directly affected. The Criminal Code also sanctions deliberate breaches of safety rules that endanger workers after the authority has given notice. Our note on occupational health and safety obligations in Peru covers the rules in more detail.
We work alongside the company’s safety professionals, not in place of them. We review the management system from a legal perspective: whether the committee or supervisor was properly constituted, whether the internal rules exist and are current, whether training and medical examinations are documented, and whether registers are kept for the required periods.
We then close the legal gaps: internal safety rules, committee documentation, safety clauses in contractor agreements, and a verification checklist for contractors working on site, since failing to verify their compliance is itself an infringement. We also prepare an accident response protocol so that the first hours after an incident are handled in order. The annual dates involved appear in our employment compliance calendar.
The service covers legal gap review, drafting and updating of safety documents, contractor clauses, the accident protocol, and support during inspections or investigations that follow an incident.
We do not perform technical risk assessments, workplace monitoring or medical examinations, and we do not certify that a site is safe. Those functions belong to qualified safety and occupational health providers. We also cannot promise how an authority or a prosecutor will assess a specific incident.
We keep the regional EHS team informed with a bilingual summary that maps Peruvian obligations to their global standards, so that audits run by the group and inspections by SUNAFIL look at the same evidence. Finance is alerted to exposure that may require provisioning after an incident. Where the operation involves high-risk activities, this service is usually coordinated with our work on SCTR insurance. The broader framework is described in our guide to employment compliance in Peru.
We usually begin with the entity’s current safety documents and a conversation with the person responsible for safety locally. From there we propose which gaps to address first.
Review the system
We compare the entity’s safety documentation, registers and practices with the requirements of Law 29783 and its regulations.
Close the legal gaps
We draft or adjust the internal safety rules, committee or supervisor documents, contractor clauses and policies.
Prepare for incidents
We set out what must happen after an accident: notifications, evidence, communications and cooperation with the inspectorate.
Support when it matters
If an inspection or investigation follows an incident, we assist the company throughout the proceeding.
No. Technical risk assessment and monitoring are the work of safety professionals. We address the legal side: which obligations apply, how they should be documented, what the company’s exposure is and how to respond to the authorities.
Yes. Law 29783 applies to all employers. Office operations have lower risk and may use simplified registers, but they still need a risk assessment, training, medical examinations and a committee or supervisor according to headcount.
Attend to the injured person, preserve evidence, notify the authorities within the required time and contact counsel before giving formal statements. Fatal accidents must be reported to the Ministry of Labor within 24 hours.