– and to get newly re-established ministry up and running at full throttle

By Tamica Garnett

CAPACITY building, human development and the protection of the rights of workers through measures such as the enforcement of the Joint Workplace Safety and Health Committee Regulations, are some of the areas that the newly re-established Ministry of Labour (MoL) will be focusing on going forward.
Also expected is an increase in focus on the role of the Board of Industrial Training (BIT) to appropriately train Guyanese to address the reality of the employments needs of the economy.
These were just some of the points highlighted by Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton during his contribution to the debates of the 2020 Budget, which commenced at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) on Monday.
The first speaker of the day on the government side, Minister Hamilton highlighted that his ministry is currently operating with just 63.5 per cent of its necessary staff capacity, which, over the years, has hindered the ability of the government to address labour issues across the country.
“For the last Ministry, the complement of staff should have been 137; today there are only 87. That is the condition of how [the previous administration] ran labour and the reason why they could not have done anything tangible for the workers,” Minister Hamilton said. “You could not have proper workplace inspection; proper investigation of accidents, because you don’t have the necessary employees to carry out the functions,” he added.
Over the past five years, under the previous administration, the MoL had been converted into being the Department of Labour, and was absorbed under the Ministry of Social Protection. During that period, the labour sector has been managed by four varying Ministers, and faced several critical labour issues of national proportions.

Some of the local issues included an impasse between the Guyana Teachers’ Union and the Ministry of Education (MoE); issues with the Guyana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) and the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo); and issues at the Guyana Public Service Cooperative Credit Union (GPSCCU).

UNRESOLVED MATTERS
Issues of abuse by security companies, which at times went months without paying their employees, were never addressed by the Ministry, and continue to currently occur, unabated.
Much attention was also placed on situations involving foreign companies stationed in Guyana. Issues arising out of those situations included the still unresolved contentions between Guyanese workers and the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) owned by the Russian aluminum giant, RUSAL; as well as the death of a Guyanese employee at Troy Resources, a gold-mining company owned by an Australian corporation. Despite the DoL having conducted an Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) report on the latter situation, it was never released to the public.
There were also issues at the Canadian- owned Aurora Gold Mines (AGM), and a situation arising with local workers claiming discriminatory remuneration at American- owned ExxonMobil. Many, including several trade unionists, had disagreed with ‘Labour’ being converted from a Ministry to a Department, and have hence hailed as a good move, the restoration last month of a Ministry of Labour, following a change of government. As such, Minister Hamilton said, much work is needed to truly restore ‘labour’ as a Ministry.
“The Ministry of Labour is to be re-established, and… will be built and stand on three pillars: Capacity building; human development; protection of the rights of workers. Going forward, those are things we need to do,” Minister Hamilton told the National Assembly.
“We propose to do staff development; we plan to organise and conduct training seminars and awareness sessions on OSH,” he said, adding: “The COVID-19 means that is another set of activities OSH has to monitor; we have already engaged the MoH to give us the necessary guidance in this regard.”
And with regard to manpower, Minister Hamilton said that major growth is expected in that area, and with greater emphasis being placed on establishing a permanent presence in all of the regions countrywide.
“Our intention is that in every region, we must have at least two OSH officers; presently, they don’t exist, therefore, employers, whether in mining or forestry, cannot be properly monitored,” he said, adding: “Workplace inspections were unheard of under [the previous] government.
Efforts will also be made to continue the development of Labour Officers to monitor the situation in Guyana’s recent offshore oil-and-gas industry.
“We have already engaged the American Chamber, Exxon, Tullow, and the ILO, which will help us to do the necessary training, so that our OSH and Labour Officers can be able also to regulate and supervise the space in the Atlantic. Presently, they are land-based.”

SUITABLE WORKING CONDITIONS
And in an effort to ensure that workers are employed under suitable conditions, the Minister emphasised that Joint Workplace Safety and Health Committees (WSHC) will be made a priority, even as he called out the previous administration for its complacency in that area.
“The Joint Workplace Safety and Health Committee regulations have been approved by Cabinet, and is expected to be brought into force. They approved it, yet it languished; we have to bring it into force,” Minister Hamilton said.
“We need to plan and establish the Joint Workplace Health and Safety Committee regulations. We have to train members of the workplace committees; we have to create an awareness and advertisement of the safety measures, and conduct inspections,” he added.

In Guyana, the Occupational Safety and Health Act requires businesses and workplaces that have more than 20 staff members to have a JWSHC, while workplaces with less than 20 but more than five employees are required to have a Joint Workplace Safety and Health Representative.

The main objective of having these joint committees is so as to encourage cooperation between employers and employees in investigating, developing and carrying out measures to ensure the safety and health of employees.
The role of the Committee is primarily advisory, and not policy-making or regulatory in nature. Organisations are also required, by law, to have what is called an Accident Register.
Committees are important, in that they are essential components for the effective implementation of OSH policies and practices at the workplace.
In April 2016, steps were taken to make mandatory the establishment of a Joint Workplace Safety and Health Committees/Representatives (JWSHC/R) to guide practices and policies, given that the 75-page regulation has been in draft since 2001/2002.