OSHA Registration in Tanzania: Which Premises Must Be Registered

This page is the OSHA workplace registration operating file: which premises belong on the Authority’s register, who lodges for each, and what the certificate does not cover. It is not an inspection checklist, nor a reading of your own lease.

• Every employer desk in one sequence: labour, OSHA, WCF and NSSF registration
• What the inspector opens on arrival: OSHA inspections
• The site before it is a workplace: building permits and construction approvals
• The non-citizen working at the premises: residence permits

As at 14 September 2026. This file rests on Cap. 297 and the rules made under it; take the live workplace classes, forms and fee bands from osha.go.tz before lodging anything.

Who holds the mandate, and what the Act counts as a workplace

OSHA sits as an executive agency under the ministry responsible for labour, administering Cap. 297 on Mainland Tanzania. Its register is a register of premises. The Act reaches every place where a person is, for the time being, required to work: public sector and private, urban and rural, permanent staff and casual hands alike. Nothing in that test asks how the occupier is incorporated.

The unit of registration is the site, not the legal person. A group with an office in Masaki, a store in Ubungo and a plant at Mkuranga holds three workplaces and files three times. Directors who read this as a corporate act (done once, like a TIN) find the gap when an inspector reaches the second address.

Cap. 297 is Mainland law. A hotel in Unguja or a workshop in Pemba answers to the islands’ own labour administration; a Dar es Salaam certificate does not travel there.

Restrictions that decide the file before OSHA sees it

Screen the activity first. GN No. 487A of 2025 lists the activities reserved for citizens. A foreign-held company registering premises for a reserved trade fails at the licensing desk, not at this one.

Occupation is its own question. Under the Land Act Cap. 113 a company with non-citizen shareholding takes land for investment through a derivative right routed via the Tanzania Investment Centre; a lease signed before that route settles is weak paper. A non-citizen working on the site needs a permit under the Non-Citizens (Employment Regulation) Act, 2015 alongside a residence-permit class under the Immigration Act Cap. 54. Registering premises authorises nobody to work inside them.

Which premises register, and who lodges

Classes and fee bands move by Gazette and portal revision. Take each site’s class from the Authority on the day you file.

The three-employee floor, and the count that decides it

OSHA’s published position is that every workplace registers, and it names a floor of three employees. Operators get that floor wrong in both directions: a two-person consultancy in a shared office is not a five-person garage, and a business crossing the floor mid-year lodges then, not at the next licence cycle.

Count heads honestly. Because the Act reaches casual and temporary workers, a site with a permanent crew of six and eleven seasonal hands is a seventeen-person workplace from the day the season opens. Outsourced and labour-broker staff count too: an inspector counts people present, not names on a payroll.

At twenty or more employees Cap. 297 moves from registration into structure: a safety and health committee for that workplace, with worker representation, minutes and a standing agenda. Confirm the live threshold and composition rule with the Authority; at that size the committee record is among the first things asked for.

Registration once, compliance certificate every year

Two documents get confused, and the confusion is expensive. Registration enters the premises on the register, and should come before occupation. The compliance certificate is yearly, OSHA’s stated position is that in every year an employer should hold one, and it follows an inspection, not an upload.

Applications run through the Authority’s electronic services, and the charge is settled against a Government Electronic Payment Gateway control number. One generated and never paid leaves an application open, not lodged. Diary the renewal rather than waiting to be called: a certificate that expired in March is found in November by a bank, and the replacement sits behind an inspection queue.

Plant carries its own certificates

A premises certificate does not certify the machinery inside. Boilers, steam and air receivers, pressure vessels, lifts, hoists and cranes are examined and certified in their own right, on their own intervals, by an inspector or an approved competent person. A registered factory running an uncertified pressure vessel has a prohibition notice waiting in it.

Chemicals, radiation sources and biological agents pull in further desks. Medical surveillance attaches to the worker, not the plant: the Authority’s stated sequence is an examination on engagement, examinations during the job, and one on leaving it. Ask for the interval that fits your exposure class.

From premises list to certificate: the order the desks take it

1. List the premises, not the companies: every address where anyone works, including a site taken for one season.
2. Screen activity and occupation: reserved list, sector licence, land route, and permits for any non-citizen on site.
3. Classify each site with the Authority: the class fixes the fee band, the inspection depth and the forms.
4. Lodge through electronic services: attach company and premises papers, generate the control number, then pay it.
5. Prepare the site for the visit: first aid, fire equipment, machine certificates, registers and a written policy in place.
6. Take the inspection and close the notices: an improvement notice carries a date; a closed one is evidence, an open one is history.
7. Collect the certificate and display it: at the address it names, where an inspector and your own workers read it.
8. Open a renewal diary per site: opened when the site opens, not when someone asks.

The papers the application carries

Certificate of incorporation with the memorandum and articles; TIN certificate; the business licence covering the activity; the tenancy agreement, title deed or certificate of occupancy for the address; a layout showing exits and escape routes, with the occupation permit for a new building; an employee list by category; a schedule of machinery with current examination certificates; the fire safety inspection certificate; environmental clearance from NEMC where the activity required it; the written safety and health policy; protective-equipment provision; medical examination records; and the WCF and NSSF registration numbers.

Files fail on mismatch more often than on substance: the address on the lease, on the licence and in the application should be one address, written one way. A plot number appearing three ways is three premises to the clerk.

Worked example: three premises, one payroll

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation. A manufacturer runs a Dar es Salaam office with 12 staff, a plant at Mkuranga with 140, and a Mwanza depot with 6. Under Cap. 297 that is three registrations and three inspection diaries. The plant passes the twenty-employee mark and carries the committee; the office and depot do not, though each registers and each needs its yearly certificate. The depot’s six clear the floor.

Payroll runs the other way, once, for the employer. Monthly gross emoluments: 12 × TZS 2,500,000 = TZS 30,000,000; 140 × TZS 600,000 = TZS 84,000,000; 6 × TZS 700,000 = TZS 4,200,000. Wage bill TZS 118,200,000. Workers Compensation Fund contribution at the private-sector rate of 0.5 per cent under the Workers Compensation Act Cap. 263 is TZS 591,000 monthly, TZS 7,092,000 across the year. Skills and Development Levy at 3.5 per cent under the Vocational Education and Training Act Cap. 82, which bites on employers of ten or more, is TZS 4,137,000 monthly, collected by TRA with the PAYE return. Confirm the live schedule on tra.go.tz.

Safety obligations multiply by address; payroll obligations aggregate by employer. A finance team budgeting once here because it budgets once for the Fund has under-provided by two sites.

Where this file stalls

• A branch trades for a full year before anyone lodges a second registration.
• A registration certificate is produced at an inspection while the yearly one lapsed a cycle ago.
• A tenant in a shared office relies on the owner’s building file and holds nothing in its own name.
• Subcontractors treat the principal contractor’s registration as discharging their duties to their own crews.
• Machinery is installed and commissioned with no examination certificate, and the line is stopped rather than fined.
• A control number is generated at year end, never paid, and reported internally as submitted.
• Improvement notices from the last visit are filed rather than closed, so the next inspector starts from them.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

The Authority registers the workplace and inspects it. Fire safety is certified under the Fire and Rescue Force Act, No. 14 of 2007. NEMC owns environmental clearance under the Environmental Management Act Cap. 191. The Workers Compensation Fund owns injury and disease compensation under Cap. 263; compensating an accident closes nothing about how it happened. NSSF owns social security registration. The Labour Commissioner, under the Labour Institutions Act, owns labour inspection and the Employment and Labour Relations Act, No. 6 of 2004 duties.

The local authority owns the business licence and the building’s occupation permit. Sector regulators keep their own mandates: the Mining Commission at a mine, TMDA where regulated products are made, TCAA and TASAC in transport.

Zatra prepares, structures and coordinates the registration file and briefs the hands that must sign it. It does not practise law, audit, engineer or issue certificates, and gives no assurance of any outcome.

What to confirm before you act

• Every address where anyone works, short-term sites included, and any address on a licence but absent from the property file.
• The workplace class given to each site, and the fee band following from it.
• Whether each site clears the floor of three, outsourced hands included, and whether it reaches twenty.
• The expiry date on every compliance certificate, and which inspection it depends on.
• Each item of plant with its certificate date, and the approved examiner who signed it.
• Whether the activity touches GN No. 487A of 2025, a sector safety regulator, or a non-citizen land or permit route.
• The live forms and charges on osha.go.tz, plus the fire, environmental and workers-compensation files raised in the same visit.