National Occupational Safety and Health Policy 2025 - 2030

The Policy specifically responds to Target 8.8 of Goal No. 8 which requires member states to “Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment.”

This Policy serves as a means of promoting domestication of the provisions of the ILO Conventions which the country has ratified. The Conventions are: Convention 155 on Occupational Safety and Health, Convention 187 on the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health, and Convention 184 on Safety and Health in Agriculture.

This first National Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Policy aims to reduce occupational accidents and work-related diseases by minimizing, so far as is reasonably practicable, the hazards inherent in the working environment.

According to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) 2019 report on ‘Safety and Health at the heart of the future of work’, it is estimated that occupational diseases and accidents represent a loss of almost 4% of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The issue is exacerbated in many sub-Saharan African countries, including Malawi, due to a lack of robust Occupational Safety and Health management systems at most workplaces.

The huge economic burden that arises due to loss of income, compounded by ill health, is experienced first and foremost by workers and their families, but also enterprises that may have to recruit and train new staff, and the nation as a whole through lost productivity.

Improving the safety and health of workers through this Policy will significantly increase productivity in workplaces, encourage more investments, enhance job creation, boost worker morale, and offer job satisfaction.

It will reinforce the Malawi Decent Work Country Programme and contribute to the attainment of an inclusively “wealthy and self-reliant nation”, as envisaged in Malawi 2063.

Prevention of occupational safety and health risks is also key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG Target 8.8, which advocates for the protection of labour rights and promotion of safe and secure working environments for all workers by 2030; and Goal 3 on “healthy lives and promotion of well-being for all, at all ages”.

Realisation of this Policy will result in an improved legal framework governing occupational safety and health, improved national capacity building of all key players for its implementation; increased awareness and information dissemination complemented by increased research efforts.

With the adoption of this Policy, the Malawi Government remains committed towards safeguarding the safety and health of all categories of workers in all sectors of the economy. This includes workers in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and the informal economy. The Policy will also enable Malawi
to domesticate and implement the provisions of the OSH Conventions of the ILO.

The implementation of this Policy will contribute significantly to achievement of a safe and healthy workforce. I call upon all stakeholders to embrace this Policy so that together we reduce the risk of injury and illness to our workers, and attain the goal of high productivity and economic growth envisaged in Malawi 2063.