39.—(1) The Chief Executive Officer may require employers in commerce or industry to furnish such returns and other information and to keep such records and produce them for examination as appear to the Chief Executive Officer to be necessary for the purposes of this Act.
(2) Subject to subsection (3), returns and other information furnished pursuant to subsection (1) and any information obtained on an examination made pursuant to subsection (1) must not, without the consent of the employer to whose business the returns or information relate, be disclosed otherwise than to —
(a)
the Institute or a committee appointed by the Institute;
(b)
an officer of the Institute or of the committee; or
(c)
any person entitled to take part in the proceedings of the Institute.
(3) Subsection (2) does not apply to —
(a)
the disclosure of returns or information in the form of a summary of similar returns or information furnished by or obtained from a number of employers, if the summary is so framed as not to enable particulars relating to any individual business to be ascertained from it; or
(b)
any disclosure of information made for the purposes of any legal proceedings pursuant to this Act or any criminal proceedings, whether pursuant to this Act or not, or for the purposes of any report of those proceedings.
(4) A certificate purporting to be issued by or on behalf of the Chief Executive Officer and stating that he or she has approved any kind of information, return or record for the purposes of subsection (2) is, in any legal proceedings, evidence of the facts stated in the certificate.
(5) Any person who fails to comply with any requirement made under subsection (1) shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $1,000 and, in the case of a second or subsequent conviction, to a fine not exceeding $2,000.
(6) Any person who —
(a)
knowingly or recklessly furnishes, pursuant to any requirement made under subsection (1), any return or other information which is false in a material particular;
(b)
wilfully makes a false entry in any record required to be produced under subsection (1) or, with intent to deceive, makes use of any such entry which the person knows to be false; or
(c)
discloses any information in contravention of subsection (2),
shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $2,000.