What exactly is checked in safety production inspections?

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There has always been disagreement regarding what safety regulatory authorities should inspect in enterprises. A common view is that safety regulatory authorities are responsible for identifying potential hazards, and it is \"whoever conducts the inspection is accountable.\" The most typical case is probably the Zhoucun case in Zibo. Two work safety law enforcement inspectors from Zhoucun went to a certain enterprise for an inspection, issued orders requiring rectification of various potential hazards within a specified time frame, and conducted follow-up inspections in accordance with the law. Two months later, an employee of the company died from an electric shock. Two safety production law enforcement inspectors were found liable for failing to detect the safety hazards present in the enterprise, and were held criminally responsible for dereliction of duty. So, can safety production law enforcement officers identify all the potential safety hazards in enterprises? Do safety production law enforcement inspectors have the ability to identify all potential hazards? Let’s do an analysis: First, how many safety hazards does the enterprise have? The safety hazards in enterprises can vary in severity, with some being urgent and others less so. The characteristics of the field of safe production are complexity and cross-disciplinary nature. The **standards and industry norms used cover various sectors such as electricity, machinery, chemicals, computing, materials, biology, and so on. There are certainly thousands of such standards, if not tens of thousands; I think a few thousand is an accurate estimate. As of now, I have only seen the tip of the iceberg. It is absolutely impossible for safety production law enforcement officers to use various standards to identify all potential hazards in enterprises. Not to mention safety inspectors, even **top experts** – I’m confident that no expert can list all of the potential hazards in a company. If so, it’s definitely a scammer. So, is it realistic to assume that an ordinary law enforcement inspector possesses omnipotent capabilities for identifying potential hazards? II. Safety hazards are dynamic. To take the simplest example: if a company’s emergency exit is blocked and law enforcement officers arrive, that exit is likely to be cleared urgently. You leave, and the passage gets blocked again; hazards are dynamic. Many safety hazards were resolved at that time, but as the wires age, personnel change, and management practices evolve, new hazards may arise; it is a dynamic situation. In other fields, the identification of safety hazards is quite scientific; I’m really puzzled as to why this is not the case in the field of production safety. For example, the traffic police conducted a patrol of the road and found no problems. However, after he passed by, a serious traffic accident might have occurred due to some safety hazard; why isn’t the traffic police officer punished for failing to detect that hazard? Obviously, safety production law enforcement and inspection officers do not have the ability to identify all potential hazards, nor can they bear unlimited inspection responsibilities for the enterprises they inspect. However, at present, not many people or departments share this view. In the Zibo Zhoucun case, the approximate statements of the 4 or 5 witnesses, ranging from the company’s chairman to the office manager to ordinary employees, were that the potential hazards within the company had always been present, and that safety inspectors should have detected them, but failed to do so. ”Failing to address the safety hazards existing within the company itself, the company still acts with great confidence, asserting that safety inspection officers are essentially the company’s own safety supervisors and should be responsible for identifying those hazards. Today, these law enforcement and inspection officers for work safety are the main entities responsible for identifying potential safety hazards in enterprises. The idea that it is their role to detect such hazards on behalf of the companies remains very popular and in demand, which is why the Zibo Intermediate People’s Court reached the absurd conclusion that these officers are liable. In fact, the most fundamental issue here is the confusion between the regulatory responsibilities of the work safety supervision and management departments and the primary responsibility of enterprises for their own work safety. What is the primary responsibility of an enterprise for safe production? In simple terms, once a company earns money and generates legitimate profits, it should also bear the corresponding costs, which include various expenditures related to safe production. Moreover, since companies know better than ** and third parties the weaknesses in their own processes and safety measures, as well as the specific problems that exist, and since they are the ones most directly affected by these issues, companies have the greatest capacity to eliminate safety hazards and ensure safety – it is their duty to do so. For enterprises, fulfilling their primary responsibility for safe production can be summarized in twelve words: conduct self-inspections for safety, rectify potential hazards on their own, and take full responsibility for it. The supervision carried out by the departments in charge of work safety oversight is a form of administrative supervision; it involves determining whether enterprises are violating laws and regulations related to work safety, and ensuring that these enterprises fulfill their responsibilities in this regard. Such supervision serves as a means of urging action rather than taking over tasks on behalf of the enterprises, and it is about prompting action rather than handling things on their behalf. The \"primary\" responsibility for work safety cannot be shifted to the safety oversight departments. Inspections are an important means for safety supervision authorities to carry out their duties in overseeing work safety; by inspecting enterprises, they urge these companies to fulfill their responsibilities regarding work safety. How should safety production law enforcement inspectors conduct inspections at enterprises? In the past, I think most people would go straight to the scene, head straight to the front line, to look for potential hazards and problems. This is the logic of the past: going to enterprises to identify potential hazards, thereby taking on the role of being the entity responsible for detecting production safety risks. I believe that, following the logic that inspections are \"an important means of implementing administrative supervision over work safety,\" work safety inspections can be roughly divided into two parts: one is record-keeping in ledgers ； The second is on-site inspection of the work area. Records kept in account books include many items; common ones are documents related to a company’s safety in production and occupational health education and training, systems for conducting safety inspections in production as well as records of identifying and addressing potential safety hazards, records of the maintenance, upkeep, and testing of safety equipment and facilities for protecting against occupational diseases, as well as records of managing and inspecting contractors, among others. By carefully reviewing the records, it is possible to assess the extent to which the enterprise fulfills its primary responsibilities for safe production as well as identify any weak points, thereby urging the enterprise to strengthen those areas and improve its safety management standards. On-site inspections of work sites are divided into two aspects: one is to verify the accuracy of the records kept in the ledgers. Through sampling or a comprehensive inspection, verify the consistency between the work site and the records kept in the files to determine whether the requirements have indeed been implemented Is it just something written on paper? Moreover, with the development of information systems, general ledger records of enterprises can be viewed on big data platforms, eliminating the need for on-site verification in most cases. What may also require on-site verification are the records of ongoing processes such as dynamic hazard identification and training within the enterprise. Secondly, it involves drawing conclusions from partial observations; by conducting sample checks or comprehensive inspections of the work site, it is possible to determine whether the company’s safety responsibility system is being implemented, whether the relevant systems are in place and properly enforced, whether training programs are carried out, and whether on-site management mechanisms are functioning effectively. Regarding existing potential hazards, in addition to urging enterprises to make corrections, it is most important to push them to further improve their hazard identification mechanisms, draw lessons from these cases, identify hazards that have not yet been detected, and gradually establish an effective system for self-identification and self-correction of such hazards. In short, in an era governed by the rule of law, the roles of enterprises and ** can no longer be confused. Only by clarifying the primary responsibilities of enterprises for safe production and the boundaries of the oversight responsibilities of safety supervision agencies can the duties related to safety production inspections be made clearer; it becomes possible to determine what needs to be inspected in terms of safe production, and this enables safety production enforcement officers to carry out their oversight tasks more effectively. Just my opinion.