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Articles 20 and 21 of the Convention. Annual report on the work of the labour inspection services. The Committee notes the statistics on the enterprises inspected between January and June 2006 (73) and in 2004 (107), and the indications of the type of violations reported in 2004. In order to have an overview of the operation of the system and assess its effectiveness in relation to the Convention, other information is required, such as the number of workplaces liable to inspection and the number of workers covered, the staff of the inspection services, the penalties applied, and cases of employment accidents and occupational diseases. This information should be published annually so that it can be brought to the knowledge of the social partners to enable them to express their points of view for the purpose of improving the inspection system. The regular transmission to the Office of an annual report provides the ILO supervisory bodies with the necessary information to discharge their functions and offers appropriate support to the Government with a view to improving the application of the Convention and achieving its objectives. In this respect, noting the commitment of the Department of Labour to publish annual reports in future, the Committee trusts that the necessary conditions will soon be established for this purpose and for the communication to the Office of such reports within the time limits established in Article 20, either as part of the reports of the Department of Labour or separately.

The Committee requests the Government in any event to provide with its next report information that is as detailed as possible on the inspection system as a whole (structure, staffing, premises and material resources available, industrial and commercial places liable to inspection, results of inspections, follow-up by the courts where appropriate, etc.), with an indication of any difficulties encountered by inspectors in the discharge of their functions.