-Advisory Council Chairman
‘Persons are being injured, maimed and killed in the workplace and and not enough is being done to penalize employers’
Cost-cutting measures by businesses designed to respond to reduced profits arising out of the current economic downturn could result in the removal of vital safety and health mechanisms designed to ensure the safety and health of workers, according to Chairman of the National Advisory Council on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) Dale Beresford.
In an exclusive interview with Stabroek Business earlier this week Beresford said that lower standards of safety and health in the productive sector that could expose workers to risks of injury and compromise their health were a distinct possibility as businesses move to reduce costs associated with what they consider to be the less important aspects of their operations.
“We are fearful that issues of safety and health, which are already less than high on the scale of priorities of a number of entities, could be further compromised in this environment of economic crisis. Apart from the removal of those physical amenities designed to protect people who may be working in conditions of high risk, what we also fear is that employees whose jobs are concerned with ensuring the maintenance of safety and health standards could be sacrificed if and when the time to reduce the labour force comes,” Beresford said.
According to Beresford it already seemed inevitable that companies will have to introduce cost-cutting measures to keep their businesses afloat in the period ahead. “We believe that those measures could well include reduced expenditure on the purchase of important safety and health equipment and the removal of medical services including, where appropriate, medical checks for workers. There is also the danger that hazardous conditions at workplaces may be ignored in the interest of saving money,” Beresford said.
And the NACOSH Chairman told Stabroek Business that he would be seeking to have the organization “make an issue” of protecting the safety and health of workers during the period of economic crisis. “It is an issue that is of as much concern to the public sector as it is to the private sector since, in a general sense, national sensitivity to safety and health standards are much less high than it ought to be,” Beresford added.
NCOSH is a multi-stakeholder body comprising representatives of the labour movement and public and private sector agencies charged with advising the Ministry of Labour on issues of occupational safety and health.
Beresford said that he was particularly concerned about the likelihood of lower safety and health standards in the high-risk sectors including mining and agriculture. He said that the irony was that there was already evidence that cost-cutting measures were being instituted in some high-risk sectors.
Asked whether NACOSH had taken any initiatives to respond to the threat of reduced safety and health standards Beresford said that apart from whatever recommendations the Association would make it was really up to the Ministry of Labour “and to the commitment of the employers” to ensure that safety and health standards were not compromised. He said that NACOSH had made a number of recommendations to Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir, through his Ministry’s Occupational Safety and Health Department including a proposal that the Ministry conduct training programmes in public and private sector entities designed to sensitize workers, managers and business owners to the importance of maintaining high safety and health at this time.
Meanwhile, Beresford told Stabroek Business that the low level of sensitivity to issues of safety and health in both the public and private sectors was “cause for much concern” since what that meant was that there was a greater likelihood that issues of safety and health would be sacrificed on the altar of cost-cutting expediency. He said that the challenge of combating low standards of safety and health protection had to contend with “a culture of general indifference to workers’ safety.”
Noting that sensitivity to issues of safety and health in Guyana is usually “more prevalent in entities that are subsidiaries of overseas companies or have overseas connections,” Beresford said that it has taken far too long for local business owners and managers “to address an issue which, in its own right, is critical to productivity and profits.”
Beresford, who is the labour representative on NACOSH told Stabroek Business that there are far too many managers who believe that “employees are robots” and that their health and safety issues are secondary to profits and to “getting the job done.” He said that a point had been reached where it had become necessary for labour to assume a posture of zero tolerance” of poor safety and health standards. “Personally, I believe that there is cause for great concern over safety and health standards in Guyana. I do not think that the law is being enforced effectively and I do not think that enough employers are being prosecuted for transgression of the law. Persons are being injured, maimed and killed in the workplace and not enough is being done to penalize employers,” he added.
Beresford told Stabroek Business that last year a survey had been carried out with a view to determining the extent of compliance with the requirement under the Occupational Safety and Health Act that agencies with more than twenty employees set up Safety and Health Committees. “As far as we are aware only a few Government Ministries are compliant and the Safety and Health Committees in those Ministries were set up within two days of each other. I should add that those Ministries with more than twenty employees that do not have such committees are in violation of the law,” Beresford said.
Meanwhile, Beresford, a trained safety and health professional told Stabroek Business that while every manager or owner in every public or private sector agency ought to be made to account for the extent to which safety and health standards are upheld, much of the weakness in the system lie in the failure of the Ministry of Labour to effectively police the Occupational Safety and Health Act. “We believe that the Ministry of Labour ought to play a much more pivotal role in policing the Act and we at NACOSH have indicated that we are prepared to offer the guidance and support that would help to ensure higher standards of safety and health at workplaces,” he added.
Beresford told Stabroek Business that less than acceptable levels of concern for safety and health issues at the workplace were reflected in the fact that as far as he knew there were no more than “about thirty” trained safety and health professionals in Guyana. He disclosed that the Institute of Distance and Continuing Education (IDCE) was currently running a programme on Occupational Safety and Health and that employees from a number of local agencies including the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company, the Guyana Power and Light Company, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, the Guyana Oil Company and MACORP were currently participating in the programme.
Meanwhile, Beresford says that he had communicated to the Labour Minister the fact that Guyana was yet to comply with a provision within the Occupational Safety and Health Act that a Commissioner of Safety and Health be appointed. He said that the appointment of this functionary would afford “much greater: oversight” of safety and health issues and would play ‘a direct and critical” role in ensuring that workplaces are compliant “with the Act as a whole,” he said.
