Health and Safety in Peru: 11 Duties for a Lima Office
Peru's occupational safety law does something most of the frameworks in this series do not. It states expressly that an employer may contract a third party to manage and implement its safety obligations, and in the same breath that doing so does not exempt the employer from its duty of prevention.
That is an unusually honest piece of drafting, and it frames what follows. Lima has grown into a significant nearshore location for technology, financial processing and Spanish-language service operations, and the entities that international groups establish there carry a detailed set of obligations that outsourcing arranges but does not remove.
Eleven duties.
1. It applies to every employer, at any size
The starting point, and there is no threshold.
Law 29783, published in August 2011 and given effect by its implementing regulation, applies to every employer, without regard to the size of the business or the sector. It was subsequently amended, including by Law 30222 in 2014.
The law rests on nine stated principles, and two are worth noting for a foreign parent. The principle of responsibility places the economic, legal and other consequences of an accident or occupational illness on the employer. And the principle of primacy of reality means the facts prevail over the documents, so an arrangement that exists on paper and not in practice is treated as what it is. The text is published by Peruvian public bodies.
2. A committee at twenty workers, a supervisor below
The structural threshold, and it is lower than most jurisdictions in this series.
Workplaces with twenty or more workers must constitute a joint safety and health committee. Below twenty, the workers themselves appoint a safety and health supervisor.
In both cases the workers elect their own representatives, and where a union exists it has a role in that process. The committee or supervisor is expected to meet on a monthly cycle with minutes recorded, which is a more frequent rhythm than the quarterly or annual patterns common elsewhere.
A Lima delivery operation crosses twenty almost immediately.
3. At least four training sessions a year
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A prescribed frequency rather than a general duty, and it is the obligation most often unmet in a foreign-owned entity.
Among the employer's responsibilities within the management system, the law requires not fewer than four training sessions per year on health and safety matters. Alongside that sit related obligations: giving each worker a copy of the internal safety regulation, attaching a description of the safety and health recommendations to the employment contract, and providing paid time and economic support for workers to attend training.
Four sessions a year, documented, for every worker. A group induction module delivered once does not approach it.
4. A risk map, displayed where people can see it
An obligation with a physical dimension that surprises people.
The employer must prepare a risk map with the participation of the union organisation, worker representatives, delegates and the safety and health committee, and it must be displayed in a visible place.
Two features distinguish it. Participation in its preparation is specified rather than encouraged. And it is a display item, not a filed document, which means an inspector can assess compliance from the reception area.
5. IPERC, documented and current
The assessment itself, known throughout Peru by its initials.
Hazard identification, risk evaluation and control determination must be documented, kept updated and available for inspection, applying a hierarchy of controls that will be familiar: elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment.
An out-of-date IPERC is among the findings Peruvian practitioners identify most frequently, and it is treated as a serious infraction rather than an administrative one.
6. An annual plan and programme
Each year the entity must produce an annual safety and health plan and programme, with objectives, indicators and named responsibilities.
This is an establishment-level document on an annual cycle. As in Colombia, Argentina and Morocco, a translated group plan does not satisfy it, because the obligation is to plan for that workplace with local participation.
7. Mandatory records, and a twenty year retention
The documentary core, with a retention period that catches groups out.
The implementing regulation specifies the mandatory records an employer must maintain. The law provides that records relating to occupational illnesses are conserved for a period of twenty years.
Twenty years is longer than most corporate record retention schedules contemplate and considerably longer than the tenure of any system likely to hold them. A group that migrates platforms every few years should treat this as a design requirement rather than an afterthought.
8. The internal safety regulation
Employers above a defined size must prepare an internal health and safety regulation and provide it to each worker, covering emergency procedures, the obligations of workers and employers, and applicable sanctions.
Confirm the threshold applicable to your entity through local advice, since it is set in the implementing regulation and is reported inconsistently in circulating guidance.
9. Occupational medical examinations
Medical examinations sit within the system, with frequency determined by the risk level of the activity, and failure to carry them out is treated as a serious infraction.
As across Latin America, this is a scheduled programme delivered through occupational medicine rather than a service arranged reactively. The Peruvian implementing regulation is published through the ILO's legislative database.
10. Audits of the management system
The implementing regulation provides for audits of the safety and health management system, with defined effects and follow-up.
This places Peru alongside Kenya, Indonesia and Colombia in the group of jurisdictions where periodic external or formal examination is part of the regime rather than a discretionary assurance exercise. Establish which audit obligations apply to your activity and cycle rather than assuming an office is outside them.
11. Criminal liability, and what outsourcing does not do
The two points that close the loop, and they belong together.
Law 29783 incorporated an article into the Penal Code creating criminal liability where an employer, having been notified by the competent authority, deliberately fails to adopt required safety and health measures and that failure causes death or serious injury. Enforcement of the administrative regime sits with the national labour inspection authority, which can impose substantial fines and order work to stop.
And returning to where this article started: the law permits employers to contract third parties for the management, implementation, monitoring and compliance of safety and health obligations, while stating that this does not exempt the employer from its duty of prevention or, where applicable, from making good.
That is the correct framing for any consultancy relationship anywhere, and Peru simply says it out loud.
What a Lima entity needs
| Duty | Trigger | Common position |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Every employer, any size | Assumed size-dependent |
| Committee or supervisor | Committee at 20, supervisor below | Not constituted |
| Monthly meetings | Ongoing, minuted | Not held |
| Four trainings a year | Every worker | Induction only |
| Risk map | Prepared with participation, displayed | Not produced |
| IPERC | Documented, current, hierarchy applied | Out of date |
| Annual plan and programme | Each year, locally | Group plan translated |
| Records | Per the regulation, 20 years for illness | Retention not designed for |
| Internal regulation | Above the applicable threshold | Not issued |
| Medical examinations | By risk level | Not arranged |
| Audits | Per the regime | Not anticipated |
Rows two and four are where to start. The first is a structure that must exist before the rest functions, and the second is a recurring commitment that is straightforward to schedule and conspicuous when absent.
Latin America, completed
Peru is the sixth Latin American jurisdiction covered in this series, and together they make an argument that a group nearshoring into the region should take seriously.
Brazil brought psychosocial factors within its risk management programme, enforceable since May 2026. Mexico applies dedicated official standards to psychosocial risk and to telework conditions. Colombia requires an annual self-assessment scored out of one hundred and reported. Chile requires a tailored prevention protocol covering harassment and third-party violence, with complaints notified to the insurance administrator. Argentina prescribes the monthly professional hours of safety and occupational medicine support. Peru prescribes the training frequency, the displayed risk map and a twenty year retention.
Six countries, six mechanisms, and a consistent regional characteristic: Latin American systems prescribe the instrument, the frequency and often the provider, rather than setting an outcome and leaving the employer to judge proportionality. That is close to the opposite of the British approach, and it is why group models built on British assumptions consistently fall short there.
What travels is the methodology and the register. What does not travel is the artefact, the cycle or the person entitled to produce it. Holding one group view while each entity meets its own national test is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits confirm each entity satisfies its own requirements.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite coordinates locally qualified practitioners in Peru, so the committee, the plan, the training cycle and the records are established under Peruvian requirements, while your group keeps one point of contact across every country. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with finance and banking, IT and software and professional services organisations.
Our global health and safety consultants handle the jurisdictions that accompany a Peruvian entity, and our international health and safety consultants confirm what is outstanding locally. The ILO publishes the international standards behind many of these frameworks.
If your Lima entity has more than twenty people and no constituted committee, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
