Weak enforcement mechanisms within the Occupational Safety and Health Department of the Ministry of Labour are largely to blame for the high number of workplace accidents that have occurred during the first quarter of this year, according to a senior private official. And according to the city businesswoman Occupational Safety and Health Month, which is being celebrated in April, should be used by the Ministry to initiate investigations into safety and health transgressions that continue to erode the health of workers.
“Frankly, I doubt that many of these accidents have been properly investigated,” she added.
“Most of the accidents referred to in the Minister’s statement would have occurred in the private sector and proper investigations are likely to reveal that many of them occurred because the proprietors were not under any real pressure to enforce safety provisions. Of course, what the Minister’s statement does not say is how many of these accidents have been investigated, what were the outcomes, whether or not compensation was paid to the victims or their families where this was warranted and whether legal action was taken against delinquent employers,” the official said.
“The truth is that the business sector, the factories, the stores and the warehouses, will take their cue from the Ministry of Labour. Whatever legislation exists, where there appears to be a lack of will or an inability to enforce legislation, then that legislation is really not worth the paper that it is written on,” the official said.
In a message released last Tuesday to mark the start of Occupational Safety and Health Month Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir disclosed that during the first quarter of this year there were 121 non-fatal workplace accidents and three accidents which resulted in deaths. Nadir was also quoted as saying that good workplace safety and health practices were the exception rather than the rule in both the public and private sectors.
But the official said that what Mr. Nadir had failed to pronounce upon was the failures of his own Ministry in terms of its administration of safety and health regulations. The official said that even as the Minister was expressing concern over the state of health and safety administration in both the public and private sectors a decision had been taken late last year to further miniaturize the Occupational Safety and Health Division in the Ministry. “When one considers that safety and health inspectors are supposed to pay periodic visits to business houses across the country, we really ought to have a separate OSH Division,” the private sector official said.
“In real terms the Minister’s recent statement is a frank but devastating indictment of his own Ministry,” the official added. She said that what the statement implied, among other things, was that the Ministry was “unable to effectively enforce rules and apply penalties for safety and health transgressions in both the public and private sectors. “While the politically predictable thing to do in the case of the private sector would be to blame the delinquent employers, the Minister’s statement raises questions about the Ministry’s role, both in terms of enforcement and penalties.”
According to the official the conditions under which several factories and other private sector establishments were run in Guyana warranted immediate and serious investigation. “What you are likely to find is that there are pretty stringent health and safety measures in high risk operations and in some factories that produce food products. The stringent application of the rules in these cases really has nothing to do with the Ministry of Labour. What they have to do with is the awareness of the employer that health and safety lapses can very easily result in loss of life or loss of product,” the official said.
The private sector official said that she believed that part of the problem lay in a lack of human resources within the Ministry to police workplaces across the country. “It would surprise me greatly if there are more than half a dozen or so persons functioning as Safety and Health Officers at this time. The question that arises is whether the miniaturizing of the OSH Department and the lack of OSH officers is not symptomatic of a lack of any real interest in raising safety and health standards at workplaces.”
According to the official “if we accept – and we should – that safety and health are critical to the production process and to profitability than it would make eminent sense for the government to put at least a fraction of the resources that it has into the administration of VAT into raising safety and health standards.
While several business places have set up OSH committees the private sector official said that few were actually functioning. “I recall that my own business was approached in relation to the setting up of an HIV/AIDS Workplace Committee and that one of the problems that was being encountered in the private sector was that safety and health committees had not been functioning,” she said.
Alluding to the importance of “a safety and health culture in the business sector” the private sector official said that the prevailing wisdom in many private sector entities was that safety and health should be submerged beneath productivity.The official told this newspaper that the creation of a health and safety “culture” within the local business community could only derive from “a combination of strict enforcement by the Ministry of Labour of existing legislation and training and sensitization” aimed at heightening awareness among employers and employees alike of the importance of safety and health. “Unfortunately, what we have is a situation in which several businesses actually take their cue from what they perceive to be the government’s attitude to safety and health in private sector workplaces.”
According to the official it was important that the state agencies lead by example as far as setting high safety and health standards are concerned. She said that she had visited a number of public offices in the city over a long period, including parts of the Ministry of Labour and had been “absolutely scandalized over the hostile environment in which people were expected to work.. I believe that it is fair to say that private sector offices are far more worker friendly than offices where rank-and file public servants are expected to work, “ the official said.
