Last November we reported in this section of the approval, within the Construction Agreement, of the new mandatory courses for construction personnel, one of which is the first aid course. We then reported on the doubts generated by the drafting of the agreement, regarding validation of previous courses and content.

On January 11, 2024, the Construction Labor Foundation has issued a circular to clarify doubts, and it does clarify one of the questions we raised in November, regarding validation. It explicitly indicates that "there is no possibility of validation with other training, as it is not included in the text of the VII Convention itself." Consequently, everyone must take the approved course of the Convention, as it does not validate the courses taken previously neither within the risk prevention regulations (art. 20 of the Prevention Law), nor in other areas such as those done by Cruz Roja, personnel, for example, which would be much more complete training than those of the Agreement, of only 4 teaching hours (not to mention that there could be a university health worker on a construction site, and the agreement requires him to take this course). No additional comment is necessary to conclude that this goes against the quality of the training of the personnel who must carry out first aid maneuvers, if necessary.

It also clarifies which personnel can teach the course (remember that the courses can only be taught by professionals that the FLC itself approves), and indicates that health personnel are not competent to carry out first aid courses, and that only prevention technicians can carry them out. It is their internal problem, because when they provided for the approval of personnel who could take the prevention courses of the Construction Convention, they only provided for the approval of prevention technicians, logical given that there were only courses with technical content to be taught

As indicated in the circular, the reasons for all this are based on the fact that they "have not thought" about modifying the necessary articles to avoid all this. But the results cannot be described as anything other than major nonsense. We hope they rectify