190. Anyone undertaking electrical work may be investigated and prosecuted by the EWRB or the Secretary of Commerce and fined up to $10,000 for breaches of the Electricity Act. Members of the public are also able to initiate prosecutions for breaches of the Electricity Act.

191. Registered workers and authorised persons can be disciplined by the EWRB. (Authorised persons are those with a provisional licence, trainees or people from related trades who have been given an exemption from the requirement to be licensed). The EWRB has the power to impose fines of up to $5,000 under its disciplinary process, de-register workers, and suspend workers either for a specified length of time or until certain conditions, such as re-training, are met.

192. Workers may not be the subject of prosecutions by both the EWRB and Commerce, since it would be unfair to punish a worker twice for the same incident.

193. The Electricity Act prescribes the steps to be followed in the disciplinary process. The EWRB has its own standing orders that complement the Act's requirements.

194. Complaints in writing are referred by the Registrar of the EWRB to the Secretary of Commerce, who appoints a Complaints Assessment Committee (CAC) to find out whether or not a complaint should be considered by the EWRB. The CAC investigates the complaint, obtains information from the parties involved and reports to the EWRB on whether or not, in its opinion, the complaint should be heard by the EWRB. If the complaint is proceeded with, the EWRB then holds a disciplinary hearing. There is a right of appeal against the decision of the EWRB to the District Court. In the year ended December 1998 the EWRB held 49 disciplinary hearings and resolved 42 complaints.

195. In the year ending December 1998 there were 57 formal complaints against registered electrical workers or workers authorised to do electrical work. In the same period there were also 75 "informations" lodged. "Informations" are complaints about people who are not registered or authorised breaching the Electricity Act. These are also investigated by the Complaints Assessment Committee.

196. The legislative requirements of the current regime impose unnecessary costs and delays in the complaints process. For example, the Registrar of the EWRB is not able to withdraw complaints if they are frivolous or vexatious or to short-circuit the complaints process where there is an admission of guilt.

197. There is no provision in legislation for instant fines for workers who fail to issue Certificates of Compliance within a certain length of time following completion of the work. This has led to some very minor complaints going through the disciplinary process.

198. The EWRB and Registrar have no power to lay complaints even if unsafe or incompetent work is detected during audits.

199. The original rationale for having complaints assessment and disciplinary hearings dealt with by different bodies was to maintain separation between these processes. In the review team's view, objectivity can also be achieved within one organisation by ensuring that the people investigating or prosecuting the complaint are not also ruling on it. Other occupational licensing boards have adopted this approach.

200. A Complaints Review Group formed by Commerce and the EWRB has established that the complaints procedures and disciplinary process can take 32 weeks or more from the time a complaint is lodged to the day of the disciplinary hearing. There is provision for complaints to be fast-tracked where dangerous work is discovered, and this can take up to 14 weeks. In some cases the time taken from the beginning to the end of the process has been 12 months.

201. The Complaints Review Group has carried out work on ways in which the process can be sped up and made more effective. The group has identified the changes needed. Most involve changes to legislation and Commerce is seeking to have these changes included in a Statutes Amendment Bill to be introduced in the 1999/2000 Parliamentary year.

Gas

202. The processes for complaints and disciplinary hearings relating to registered gas workers are defined in the PG&D Act. Complaints are made to the Registrar of the PG&D Board, who decides whether the complaint is within the Board's jurisdiction and if the complaint has sufficient substance to be referred to the Board for investigation and disciplinary measures. The PG&D Board currently has a three-person complaints committee, which includes the Board's Chairperson.

203. On average the PG&D Board receives between 12 and 15 complaints about gasfitting per year. In the year ended March 1998, the Board's Complaints Committee investigated 34 written complaints about plumbing, gasfitting, and drainlaying work and activated four prosecutions. Fourteen of these complaints and all four prosecutions related to gas work.

204. The PG&D Board considers that the present process for handling complaints presents no problems, although they would like to see a speedier resolution of some issues.

205. However, industry representatives have been concerned that uncertified and unsafe work may be going unreported because there is no simple complaints reporting procedure. The Gas Appliance Advisory Committee (GASAC), formed at the request of the Chief Gas Engineer, has developed complaint forms which it will distribute and encourage people in the industry to fill in. This initiative is likely to lead to an increase in the number of complaints received.

Audit Process

Electricity

206. Random audits of registered workers are provided for under the Electricity Regulations. The main method of checking for competency is through inspection of work.

207. In the year ended June 1998, 1,364 inspections were carried out by auditors contracted to the EWRB. An analysis of the 664 audits carried out in the period of January to June showed that 11% of audits uncovered some degree of non compliance. This percentage was the same as for the previous year.

208. The Office of the Chief Electrical Engineer also carries out audits of electrical safety. In the year ended 30 December 1998, 35 audits of installations were carried out.

209. The most obvious deficiency in the audit process is its limited coverage of electrical work. Audits are based on workers who send in Certificates of Compliance, which means that those workers who are not obliged to send in certificates (such as electrical service technicians who don't do work that is covered by certificates) and workers who are required to certify work but do not do so, are not identified and audited. While there is no way of knowing how many electrical workers are not certifying work that should be certified, the figure has been estimated at between 30 and 50%.

210. The EWRB, in consultation with industry groups, has done considerable work on audit processes and has identified the key problems of coverage. The EWRB's circular on Competency of Electrical Workers (20 August 1997) states:

"...The audits carried out to date have concentrated on electrical work that has been carried out under the certificate of compliance regime. Accordingly little or no auditing has been carried out on:

non practising licence holders
non users of Certificates of Compliance
electrical service technicians
line mechanics
the majority of electricians and electrical inspectors..."

211. The EWRB has estimated that under the existing audit process only 60 percent of all registered electrical workers are subject to audit. As only ten percent of registered workers are actually audited, the current audit process captures only six percent of all registered workers.

212. Another problem identified was the concern about the cost effectiveness of the scheme. The current budget for audits is $482,000.

213. The EWRB proposes to move away from a concentration on random audits to a focus on ensuring competency through the practising licence requirements. The EWRB also proposes to identify high risk electrical workers for audit. These will be selected from complaints made or from records that show practising electrical workers who make very low, or no use, of Certificates of Compliance or Electrical Safety Stickers.

Gas

214. The PG&D Board also bases its audit process on the audit trail provided by Certificates of Compliance. The PG&D Board's Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 1998 recorded that 22,257 Certificates of Compliance for gasfitting were sent to the Board during that time and 338 audits were completed.

215. The audit process focuses on the competency of workers and involves a lengthy checklist covering particular skills and areas of knowledge,which a Board auditor works through with the person being audited.An auditmay take up to five visits to cover the full range of skills being inspected.

216. The PG&D Board states that it is reasonably confident that virtually all gasfitting work that should be certified is, and that their audit process is sound. However, as a result of concerns about the coverage and soundness of the audit process raised during consultation meetings, the Board has committed itself to examining its audit process.

217. The Office of the Chief Gas Engineer of Commerce also carries out audits of existing distribution systems, appliances, and gas installations.

Penalties and Remedies

218. The review team considers that the present level, range and scope of penalties and remedies are insufficient to deal effectively with the full range of misdemeanors and offences under the Electricity, Gas, and PG&D Acts.

219. The maximum penalties under the Electricity and Gas Acts are too low to match the seriousness of some offences. Currently the maximum fine for both Acts is $10,000. The review team considers that in some cases the Acts preclude effective remedies from being applied. For instance, the EWRB cannot require a person to do remedial training unless they have also suspended the person's licence. In practice there are many cases of less than competent work where training in some aspect of work would solve the problem but suspending the person's ability to work is too severe a punishment.

220. There is no system of dealing with minor infringements that are not significant enough to justify a formal disciplinary process and a major penalty being handed down.

221. The review team recommends that there should be a review of the range, level and type of penalties and remedies applying across the Electricity, Gas, and the PG&D Acts. The review should cover the following:

Making a distinction between penalties designed to punish, to deter, and merely to remind the perpetrator that improvement is required. These purposes require different types and levels of penalty.
Increasing the maximum penalty for endangering the safety of others so that it is a significant punishment. The penalties should be in line with those in the HSE Act. (The maximum penalty under the HSE Act is currently $100,000.) The review team notes that the penalty levels of the HSE Act were set in 1992 and that consideration needs to be given as to whether these need to be updated.
Introducing instant fines. These could be used with the agreement of the person fined or where the infringement is clearly established. There would need to be a right of appeal from this process.
Considering the use of demerit points along the lines of the Singaporean model explained in detail in the following section.

Singapore's Contractor Improvement Points System

222. Singapore's contractor improvement points system has been in operation in Singapore since 1984. This model provides a way of dealing with minor misdemeanors and infringements so that the perpetrator of them is discouraged from repeating them but not punished until offending has reached a certain point.

223. Under this system violations are divided into three categories. Category A (which incurs 5 demerit points) covers violations that pose immediate safety hazards or are of a serious nature (for example exposed live conductors).

224. Category B (3 demerit points) covers violations that may pose safety hazards or involve the wrong choice of equipment/apparatus. (Examples are: isolator or circuit breaker underrated or non weatherproof electrical devices exposed to weather or water splashing).

225. Category C (1 demerit point) covers violations involving poor workmanship or non-compliance with good practice. (Examples are means of isolation not readily accessible or distribution board or electrical device located below water or drainage pipe joint.)

226. Demerit points are awarded for each type of violation detected. They remain on the worker's record for a year. A person who has accumulated 25 points or more will have his or her licence suspended for a minimum period of three months. A second suspension incurred within two years from the date of the lifting of the first suspension will be for a further period of six months.

227. Workers who are awarded demerit points are informed in writing and given two weeks to appeal and seek reconsideration.

228. The Public Utilities Board of Singapore believes that since the implementation of the Contractor Improvement Points system, the standard of electrical installation work has improved with a drop in the number of inspections failed from ten percent in 1984 to around four percent for 1996.

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Printed: 25/11/2009