If there is any veracity in the media reports arising out of the electrocution of nineteen-year-old Bryan Hardial on Friday, who reportedly came into contact with a live wiring on the roof of a house where he had been assigned to do a job – installing gutters – that had nothing to do with electrical wiring – then there is much reason for an immediate and scrupulous probe into the occurrence to determine whether or not safety protocols were afforded the deceased young man to do his job in a safe environment. Apart from the fact that the occurrence resulted in a loss of life, a circumstance that gives rise to the consideration of accountability, now, perhaps more than ever before, the question of workplace safety ought to come to the fore where, going forward, and in the realms of both the state and the private sectors, the country is now being immersed in a surfeit of dangerous work – particularly in the construction sector.
Here the point should be made that if the site on which Mr Hardial met his death had to do with a private sector contract, rather than one being executed by the state, it ought to make no difference to the requirement of the application of safety and health considerations that are extant under the law. Whether or not the site on which the young man met his death was free, or otherwise, of one or more ‘dangerous workplace hazards,’ cannot be ignored. This is not a point that can be made too strenuously.
From a broader perspective, the tragedy of the recent fatality, for both the state and the private sector, is sufficiently poignant to cause them both to begin to pay attention with a much greater extent than what obtains at this time, to the broader issue of workplace safety in a country which, in many respects, is currently undergoing a fairly comprehensive urban ‘makeover’ and where considerations of workplace safety – an area in which the country enjoys a far less than stellar record – have now become a matter of particular importance and a responsibility with which neither the state nor the private sector can overlook to the extent that they have, previously, for any longer.
What the tragic death of the youthful Brian Hardial should do, is to cause both the government and the private sector to pause for a moment in the pursuit of the ongoing petro-driven physical makeover, to sit down together to undertake a careful examination of our workplace safety and health laws, and specific regulations that apply thereto, in order to ensure that these meet the rigorous demands of the place in which the country now finds itself. No less critical here is the importance of fashioning and rigorously enforcing regulations that hold the feet of ‘contractors’ across the various sectors to adherence through regulations that are inflexible in terms of the punishing of transgressors. Whether this will happen in Guyana’s particular circumstance, is, of course, another matter.
Here it has to be said that failings that have to do with workplace safety, notably, construction-related undertakings that neglect, to a greater or lesser extent, to meet the requisite all-round standards have been known to obtain in the execution of both state and private sector contracts. Nor has there ever been, over time, indications of anything even remotely resembling steely determination on the part of the state to hold the feet of private contractors to the proverbial fire. The adherence – or lack thereof – by private contractors to the stipulations that obtain in the execution of jobs contracted out by the state have come to the fore in a manner that is both costly to the country, and all too frequently, seemingly corrupt and counter-productive in their execution processes.
In an era where, globally, much wealth accumulation derives from ‘deals’ between the state, in its capacity as the keeper of the public purse, and private contractors, what often does not appear to be taken account of here, is both the enormous loss to the public purse and the danger of tragedies resulting from work that is, in one respect or another, lacking in their mindfulness of safety standards. Much of this may not apply, strictly, in the instance of the tragic death of Bryan Hardial though, unquestionably, the loss of life in this instance would appear – based on media reporting on the matter – to provide opportunity for an opening of the door on the much wider issues relating to the setting aside of lawful safety and health practices at a cost which, all too frequently, the victims ought not to have to bear.
