Legal Measures for Combating Safety Violations at Construction and Mining Sites in Kazakhstan

Abstract

Occupational safety in construction and mining requires coordination between preventive, supervisory, organisational, and enforcement mechanisms. This study examined the legal and institutional framework governing occupational safety in Kazakhstan’s construction and mining sectors and compared it with selected international approaches through a risk-governance perspective. A comparative legal analysis was conducted using seven common dimensions: employer duties, risk assessment and prevention, worker participation and training, internal monitoring and audit, state inspection and specialised supervision, accident and incident reporting, and enforcement and sanctions. The legal analysis was supplemented by descriptive official statistics on occupational injuries and labour inspection. Kazakhstan combines employer duties, internal occupational safety control, worker participation, state labour inspection, industrial-safety supervision, administrative and criminal liability, and civil compensation. National statistics showed that the number of persons affected by work-related accidents increased from 2,449 in 2022 to 2,670 in 2023 and then decreased to 2,471 in 2024 and 2,328 in 2025. In 2023, mining and quarrying accounted for 20.5% of affected persons and construction for 14.1%. In 2024, state labour inspectors conducted 5,577 inspections and identified 8,122 labour-law violations, including 1,835 occupational safety and health violations. The findings support selective adaptation of international practices, particularly stronger supervisory coordination, internal risk assessment and audit, worker participation and training, and improved digital reporting. Aggregated data do not permit causal attribution of injury trends to individual enforcement measures.