THE Ministry of Labour has been allocated almost $1 billion under the 2021 national budget, and will be using much of that sum to rehabilitate and expand its offices on Brickdam to better accommodate its increasing staff size, which has more than doubled over the past seven months.
According to Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton, when he took over the ministry in August 2020, he met around 90 staffers but this number has since grown close to 200. The growth is deemed necessary for the ministry’s extensive work programme.

Immediately upon assuming office in August 2020, Hamilton began an assessment of staffing at the Ministry of labour, and saw a major need for capacity-building, and expansion of the staff in order to properly cater for the labour needs of the population.
“The MoL staff complement has moved from under 90 to almost 200,” Hamilton explained in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle on Monday.
Since assuming his ministerial post, Hamilton has been continually highlighting the stark absence of labour officers, Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) officers, and Board of Industrial Training (BIT) officers in all of the regions across the country, and limited staff in Georgetown. Rectifying this deficiency was one of the first things that the minister embarked upon

“The MoL has six technical departments that were not being nurtured. In a matter of five months, this PPP/C Government has increased the complement of OSH officers from nine to 30 because we understand the lives of our people on work sites. We have increased the number of labour officers from 16 to 26,” Hamilton noted on Monday during his contribution to the budget debate in the National Assembly.
During his remarks, Hamilton called out the main opposition, APNU+AFC, for not having done enough to cater for the management of labour issues during their five years in government.

“The MoL has six technical departments that were not nurtured. All kinds of advantage being taken on employees and yet they saw no need to increase the complement of labour officers. “Our people were dying in the mining pits and construction sites and yet the APNU saw it not fit to train and employ more OHS officers. Our OSH Department, presently, we are reviewing legislation to deal with the oil and gas sector. These people were in government for five years and they paid no attention to it; it’s like if we didn’t need safety and health,” Hamilton asserted. 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 was managed by four different ministers and faced several critical issues.

The department was last headed by former minister, Keith Scott, who presided over issues such as teachers strike in 2018; the death of an employee at the Australian-owned gold mining company, Troy Resources in 2019; the strike and eventual firing of employees at the Russian-owed Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI); and several strikes and labour issues at the Guyana Sugar Corporation.
A full Ministry of Labour was restored in August 2020 following the change of government. Minister Hamilton explained that due to this upgrade to a ministry, the agency is now in need of an administration department.