OSHA Inspections in Tanzania: What the Inspector Opens

This page is the workplace inspection operating file: which papers get read on your floor, in what order, and what happens to the site when one is missing. It is not a hazard-engineering manual and not a fire-certificate guide.

• Which premises enter the register: workplace registration
• The building before the safety file: municipal building permits
• Foreign staff on the floor: residence permits
• Entry stamp versus permission to work: business visa and residence status

As at 14 September 2026. Confirm the live position with the Authority on osha.go.tz. This file rests on Cap. 297, with the Workers Compensation Act Cap. 263 in view wherever an injury has already happened.

Who inspects, and the instrument they inspect under

OSHA is an executive agency of the ministry responsible for labour. Its inspectors work under Cap. 297, reissued in a 2023 revised edition. The Act gives entry at any reasonable hour, sight of every statutory record held at the premises, power to take samples and measurements, and power to write notices that bind the occupier.

That writ runs on the Mainland. Workplace safety is a non-Union matter, so a hotel in Nungwi or a fish plant in Mkokotoni answers to the Zanzibar ministry responsible for labour under its own instrument. An operator holding premises on both sides keeps two files; a Mainland licence proves nothing in Unguja.

The duty falls on the occupier, not the landlord and not the holding company. Where a shed is leased, the operating company whose people work inside receives the notice.

Before the safety file: who may hold the site, who may work on it

Screen the activity before the premises. GN No. 487A of 2025 reserves certain business classes for citizens, and serviced extinguishers do not cure an operation sitting inside that list. Non-citizens are not allocated land for occupation on ordinary terms under the Land Act Cap. 113; the route is a derivative right arranged through the Tanzania Investment Centre, and the lease must sit consistently with it.

Expatriates on the floor carry two papers: a work permit from the Labour Commissioner under the Non-Citizens (Employment Regulation) Act No. 1 of 2015, and a residence permit from Immigration under the Immigration Act Cap. 54. An OSHA officer issues neither. A labour officer arriving on the same site does ask.

Registration is one paper; the compliance licence is another

Registration enters the premises in OSHA’s register once, against a plot, a building and a stated nature of work: the gate before a workplace opens. Which premises fall inside it is set out on the sibling page.

The compliance licence is a yearly event. The Authority’s own position is that an employer holds a certificate of compliance for the year once the inspection has been done, the workforce health-tested, and the safety and health committee given first-aid training. Three conditions, each needing a booking, none producible on the morning of a visit.

The inspection is not one visit-shaped thing either. OSHA runs separate disciplines and sends the officers who hold them: general workplace, mechanical safety, electrical safety, pressure vessels, lifting appliances, ergonomic assessment, and construction-site safety. Alongside sit review of drawings before a new building or plant alteration is brought into use, and review of the occupier’s risk assessment. A site with a boiler, a gantry crane and a switch room draws several of those and several dates, which is why a licence year opened in October rarely closes in December.

The premises on the certificate must be the premises in front of the officer

Most failed files fail on records rather than engineering. A certificate naming Plot 47 in Mikocheni does not cover the shed in Mbezi the line moved into last year. Premises registered as dry storage do not cover a packing line installed inside those walls. A mezzanine built above the floor departs from the approved drawing. A tenant subdividing the warehouse creates a second occupier with its own duty.

Scanned copies on a head-office server are not what the Act asks for. Register and licence both live at the workplace, read by someone standing in it. A folder of PDFs in Dar es Salaam answers a question nobody put.

Health examinations: three gates, and the records that outlive the worker

Worker health examination sits at three points: on engagement, during employment, and on leaving, whether the leaver retires or is terminated. Each is a distinct record with a date and a named examiner.

The exit gate is the one occupiers skip and the one that costs. A welder who departs with no closing audiogram and no engagement baseline leaves his employer nothing to answer with when a hearing-loss claim reaches the Workers Compensation Fund under Cap. 263. The Fund reads what was kept.

Periodic testing follows exposure, not the calendar alone. Dust, solvents, noise, lead and heat each carry their own review interval. Confirm yours with OSHA’s occupational health service rather than putting everyone through one identical annual panel.

The committee, the accident book, and the language on the wall

Cap. 297 requires a safety and health committee once a workplace passes the worker count the Act fixes, with a safety representative below that line. Confirm the live threshold in the revised text. Whatever the number, a committee is judged through its minutes: dates spread across the year, hazards named that this site actually has, actions with owners, and a next meeting set. Three identical pages signed an hour before the visit read as exactly what they are.

A death or a dangerous occurrence is notified immediately on the prescribed form. A lost-time injury becomes reportable once absence passes the period the Act fixes; confirm that day-count and the current form number with the Authority. What the site wrote down and what it sent should reconcile. Where they do not, the officer has found the thing worth finding.

Train in the language your workforce reads. Kiswahili signage, Kiswahili toolbox talks, and a contractor’s crew inducted the way your own crew is. Principal-employer duties do not stop at the gate.

What the inspector leaves behind

The prohibition notice is the one that reaches the board, because it turns a paperwork problem into lost production the same afternoon.

The order the desks actually take

1. Register the premises before they open: plot, building and nature of work, in the operating company’s name.
2. Lodge drawings and the site risk assessment: before a new building, a mezzanine or a plant alteration is used, not after.
3. Book the medical examinations: engagement for new hires, periodic for those in post, exit for everyone leaving.
4. Train the committee and the first-aiders: first-aid training is a licence condition, not a nicety.
5. Have plant examined: pressure vessels, lifting appliances, lifting tackle and the electrical installation, by an examiner the Authority recognises, dated ahead of the visit.
6. Take the inspection: the disciplines that match your site, each with its own officer.
7. Close every notice, then collect the licence: hang it where the officer stood and diary next year’s date.

Papers the file needs, kept on the premises

The certificate of registration describing the plot and what is done there; the current compliance licence; the general register and the injury book, with copies of whatever was reported; medical records across all three gates; the committee’s constitution and minutes; first-aid certificates naming trained staff; the signed risk assessment; the protective-equipment issue book; certificates for pressure vessels, lifting appliances and the electrical installation; induction and task-training records covering employees and contractors; and the approved drawings.

Papers another desk issued that an officer may still ask to see: the Fire and Rescue Force certificate, Workers Compensation Fund registration, and (where chemicals are stored or handled) the chemical inventory, safety data sheets and the permit from the Chief Government Chemist under the Industrial and Consumer Chemicals (Management and Control) Act Cap. 182.

What a stopped line costs: illustrative arithmetic

A beverage packer in Kibaha takes a prohibition notice after an officer finds the filling-line guard interlock bypassed. Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation.

• Output 1,800 cases a shift at a contribution of TZS 2,400 a case: TZS 4,320,000 a shift.
• Two shifts a day: TZS 8,640,000 of contribution a day.
• Parts land on day four; re-examination and re-inspection lift the notice on day nine.
• Nine days stopped: TZS 77,760,000 forgone, with 34 line staff on full pay throughout.
• That interlock appeared in a maintenance schedule four months earlier at TZS 6,800,000 and was deferred.

None of those figures is statutory. The shape is the point: the licence file is cheap, the notice is not, and the distance between them is measured in production days.

Where this file stalls

• Medicals done once at hire in a year nobody can name, and never at exit.
• A risk assessment copied from a foreign template: hazards listed that the site lacks, no mention of the unguarded mezzanine edge.
• Minutes written the morning of the visit, all three pages identical.
• A boiler running on an expired certificate because the examiner was booked late.
• The fire certificate handed over when the compliance licence was asked for.
• Contractor crews with no induction record, the duty assumed to travel with the subcontract.

Desks that inspect the same building and are not OSHA

Fire safety belongs to the Fire and Rescue Force under its Act No. 14 of 2007. Impact certificates and environmental audits belong to the National Environment Management Council under the Environmental Management Act Cap. 191. Municipal health officers work from the Public Health Act No. 1 of 2009 and grant the clearance a licence under the Business Licensing Act Cap. 208 assumes. Labour officers enforce the Employment and Labour Relations Act Cap. 366 through the Labour Institutions Act Cap. 300: contracts, hours and wages, not machine guarding. Radiation sources, including hospital and radiography equipment, are licensed by the Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission under the Atomic Energy Act No. 7 of 2003.

None substitutes for another. A building can be fire-certified, environmentally cleared, and still carry a prohibition notice on its only production line.

What to confirm before you act

• Live registration and licensing requirements, and the current fee schedule, on osha.go.tz: schedules move by Government Notice.
• The worker-count threshold for a committee in the current revised text of Cap. 297.
• The reporting day-count and the current accident form number, from the Authority rather than a forum.
• Which examiner is recognised for your boiler, crane or switchgear, before booking one.
• For island premises, which Zanzibar instrument and desk applies.
• Whether a move, a mezzanine, a new line or a subdivision has made your registered description untrue.

Zatra prepares, structures and coordinates this file. It does not inspect, does not certify, and promises no outcome.