–security services and mining sector continue to turn out most employee grievances

AFTER recording over 1,200 labour-related complaints in 2019, the Ministry of Labour last year saw a massive dip, receiving only 631 from aggrieved employees by the ending of November.
This was due to the closure of many businesses and the curtailing of the ministry’s work, because of the COVID-19 pandemic which hit Guyana last year.
Of the total number of the complaints received, the majority were from the security services and mining sectors, with most of the grievances involving issues in employers’ payment of workers.
“Non-payments of wages, short payment of wages, overtime, and granting of leave. Those are some of the most prevalent complaints. We had the problems mainly between mining and security services,” explained Chief Labour Officer, Charles Ogle.
Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle on Tuesday, Ogle said that like most other organisations across Guyana, the ministry was no exception in being spared the effects of measures implemented to curb the spread of the virus in Guyana.

“Everything had to reduce; the whole workload had to reduce. All like the training we usually do had to be reduced; we weren’t able to roll-out some of the stuff we would’ve liked, like things dealing with child labour. And even with OSH activities, we were curtailed. So the biggest challenges was COVID-19 last year. For 2019, we had over 1,200 complaints, and in previous years, we would receive a lot of complaints. But last year, we had 631 by November,” Ogle said. “We couldn’t do anything; the people couldn’t go in and do inspections for us to get stats. The officers didn’t want to go out; they were afraid. Likewise, they didn’t want persons to come in as well. We had to get social distancing, and had to be careful with persons coming in. We had reduced hours; going half-day. Then we had alternate days; so there wasn’t much work going on,” he added.

However, he noted that the reduction in complaints was not simply due to less reports coming in and less labour disputes occurring due to the reduction of employment that occurred across the period, since many businesses would have also shut their doors, with several even laying off the workers.
“Many of the workplaces closed; many of the shops on Regent, the restaurants, and a lot of those places were closed, so we couldn’t go into them. But because the places were closed, there were less reasons for disputes.” Ogle said, adding: “When you have more workplace operating, you have more complaints. Some businesses are still closed.”
He said that going forward, with the ministry’s current push for capacity-building, when work returns to full force, a robust work-plan will be rolled out to holistically address labour issues countrywide. “We plan to now put labour officers in every region. And we are going to collaborate with NIS, GGMC, and these type of government agencies. And we will go out there and do more outreaches and more inspections to see what is happening,” he shared.