NATIONAL INSTITUTE of LABOUR PROTECTION

I. THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT
40 years ago, on May 1st, 1971 the National Institute of Labour Protection (NILP) was established under Decision No 82/CP of the Government Council (the Government). Twenty – seven years later, on August 1st, 1998 NILP had been recorgnized by the Prime Minister as one of the leading institutes in the system of scientific technological organizations of the State.
Through 40 years of activities and development, NILP has become the biggest research and application OSH institute in the country. At the moment, NILP has two sub- institutes (one in Ho Chi Minh city and the other in Danang city), 08 centres, 01 working environment monitoring station with a high quality staff. There are 22 professional labs under NILP in Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh cities of which 40% satisfy the VINALAB standards and some of them are considered as the mordenest in South East Asia region such as working environment analysis lab, tropical chamber, etc.
The NILP has been implementing 56 projects and tasks on OSH&EP at State level and 485 projects at Ministerial and Institute level. The findings of these projects have brought out specific socio-economic benefits and have been put into the production activities in the whole country. Besides, 1091 works have also been applied in order to raise up the productivities and improve health care for workers.
Beside the implementations of scientific research projects, NILP has also conducted 19 pilot manufacturing projects with many products such as ventilators, dust and toxic gases cleaning system, personal protective equipments (dust and toxic gases masks, gasoline and grease resistant shoes and helmet preventing head injury…). Especially, from 2001 to now, 08 science and technology products of NILP have been put into production and highly appreciated and awarded with gold medals, gold cups at national and region techmarts.
The activities of information propaganda and knowledge dissemination are always considered as one of the most important tasks of NILP. Though mass media, OSH&EP science and technology information has been transferred to the public under the forms of documentary films, CDs, pictures and printed publications. In the last few years, NILP has introduced more than 80 documents of knowledge dissemination and short-term training materials on OSH; published 240 issues of Newsletter on Occupational Safety and Health & Working Environment (4 editions in English and 4 editions in Vietnamese per year) and released to more than 50 countries, territories and relevant institutes and organizations; issued Labour Protection Review (1 issue per month) and Safety-Health & Working Environment Review (4 issues per year); produced 120 television and radio programmes to popularize OSH. Through 40 years, NILP has been organizing 1,200 training courses on OSH&EP for over 70,000 trainees who are workers, trade union staffs, managers, etc. Besides, researchers from NILP have also taken part in education activities in the universities as delivering lectures and supervisors for PhD, MSc, BSc and BE.
Recently, in the globalization process, the international cooperation activities in general and in OSH field in particular are considered as strategic tasks. Since 1992, NILP has been appointed to be the CIS/ILO Collaborating Centre and in 1994 NILP has become the full member of Asian-Pacific occupational Safety and Health Organization (APOSHO). The Institute also has co-operative relationships with Japan International Safety and Health Association – JISHA (Japan), Union Aid Abroad -APHEDA (Australia), Oxfam (Belgium), etc. NILP has implemented many international projects on OSH which were financed by UNDP and ILO; co-operation projects with institutes and universities of Japan, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany…; co-ordinated with foreign institutes and universities to organize international conferences and workshops to share experience and information on OSH&EP.
The personnel is considered as the deciding factor for the success of researches and applications. From 19 staffs at the very first days, up to now NILP has 230 people that includes 50 professors, associate professors, Doctors of Science, PhD, Masters of Science and 145 engineers, bachelors and medical doctors. In the future, the staff of NILP will do its utmost to gain experience and knowledge in order to meet the requirement of a new period of development.
With its highly appreciated achievements in the past, NILP has been awarded many noble rewards by the State such as The first, second and third class of Labour Medals, The first, second and third class of Independence Medals, emulative flag of Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), certificates of merit from Prime-Minister, Presidium of VGCL and other governmental agencies, patents for public mission and intellectual priority and many other domestic and abroad valuable prizes.

II. THE DEVELOPMENT ORIENTATION OF NILP
Many countries in the world now are in the context of global economic degradation and critical global environment change and Vietnam is not exceptional. In the coming time, in order to stably develop and cope with new situation, NILP has its own development plans as follows:
Organization structure: NILP will increase the staff number to 420 people that are divided into 2 blocks: block for basic researches and regulations & policies (getting National budget) and block for scientific and technological applications (self-finance balanced).
Tasks: including 8 major tasks
– Focusing on scientific base in order to set up standards, norms, calculating methods and assessing standards on OSH&EP. Researching and proposing solutions to improve environment and working conditions for workers.
– Researching and assessing the impacts of working environment on physiology and diseases of workers; proposing solutions to prevent accidents and diseases; set up scientific bases for compensation for occupational diseases.
– Paying great attention on improvement of working condition for workers of small and medium and non-state-owned enterprises, enterprises of agriculture-forestation-fishery sector and enterprises in mountainous and rural areas.
– Researching to set up methods, forms and contents to strengthen information, promotion and training on OSH&EP.
-Taking part and well completing the project “Raising up capacity on researching OSH applications” of “National Program on occupational safety and health, phase 2011-2015”
– Strengthening and intensifying some key labs.
– Focusing on human resources education.
– Intensifying international cooperation on OSH.