-to train officers in Portuguese, Spanish and Mandarin

THE Ministry of Labour is currently engaging bilingual tutors to have Labour and Occupational Safety and Health Officers (OSH) trained in three different languages, beginning with Portuguese.

Minister Joseph Hamilton made this statement on Friday in an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI) on the sidelines of the budget debate in the National Assembly. The minister said training in Portuguese would be followed by Spanish and Mandarin, which would start soon. However, the training in Portuguese recently came to a halt with the death of the tutor.

Minister Hamilton said the government took the decision to start the language training to prepare its Labour and OSH officers to engage with the expected large influx of migrants whose first language may not be English. Chinese entrepreneurs welcomed the plan during discussions with them at a one-day seminar held at the Chinese Association Hall last Sunday.
The minister said there were only nine OSH officers when he became the minister in August, but today that number has increased to 30. This is to facilitate the ministry’s overall plan to ensure two officers are stationed in every region except Region Four, which has been categorised into three parts; East Coast, Georgetown and East Bank. Region Four will have six OSH officers.
Minister Hamilton said workplace accidents and deaths have been soaring, but he will implement measures to arrest this.

“In 2020, over 32 persons died in workplace accidents. Secondly, over 300 persons got injuries in workplaces that were non-fatal and all of this they knew, but yet they did not increase the complement of safety and health officers to supervise and to manage health and safety in the workplace.”
The pool of labour officers has also been increased from 16 to 26 and they too would be assigned to every region.

“We have had recommendations coming from every region except from Seven and Eight right now as I speak and those are being processed right now by the permanent secretary and once all the procedural things are over, we will forward them to the Public Service Ministry as regards hiring these persons and training them and sending them back in their regions,” the Labour Minister said.

Minister Hamilton also noted that the trained labour officers would be stationed in the regions from which they are drawn.