The Ministry of Transport ("MOT") has recently issued the Circular on Coordinating Effective Work on Regular Prevention and Control of the COVID-19 Epidemic and Resumption of Work and Production in the Area of Highway and Waterway Construction (the "Circular").
The Circular sets out requirements in five respects, including enhancing the awareness of epidemic prevention and control, ensuring the fulfillment of responsibilities in epidemic prevention and control, adopting scientific approaches to prevent and control the virus, improving the contingency plans and accelerating the resumption of work and production. Among others, the Circular requires that construction project owners shall lead the entities involved in the construction to further improve their regular epidemic prevention and control mechanism and fulfill the requirements for regular epidemic prevention and control, so as to ensure necessary safeguard measures will be taken effectively by designated personnel under the sound epidemic prevention and control mechanism to cover all links. In addition, supervision entities shall, as per the contract and in line with relevant requirements, assist the construction project owners with the management of regular epidemic prevention and control work. Moreover, the Circular mandates that construction entities shall bear the general responsibility for epidemic prevention and control among the construction workers engaged in the construction projects they have undertaken, designate the persons in charge of regular epidemic prevention and control among the subcontractors and at all construction sites, and in light of the actual situation, take effective steps to strengthen management at the construction sites, strictly enforce the real-name registration system that requires the recording of all individuals and vehicles entering and leaving the construction sites or boarding and disembarking from vessels, improve the working and living conditions at the construction sites based on local conditions, and step up efforts at temperature monitoring, sanitation, protection and other necessary work.