BY ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

LABOUR Minister Pia Glover-Rolle is seeking to enact into law recommendations on health and safety at work by the end of the year, according to a labour specialist.

Robert Farquharson, who oversees the Ministry of Labour’s special project unit, said the stage has been set after recommendations were proposed at the National Symposium on Occupational Safety.

With the commitment to the provisions of the Decent Work Country Programme, the Ministry of Labour and the Public Service “have set the stage” by proposing recommendations to be submitted and read to the minister. 

Mr Farquharson said the process must happen quickly so the report can be compiled and presented to the minister. He said once ratified, the government has two years to enact the recommendations into law and that “she [Ms Glover-Rolle] wants this recommendation to the government by a certain period of time because the government wants to put this into law by December of this year.”

“They want to move quickly,” Mr Farquharson said. “They don’t want to wait until next year. They want to move quickly because, you know why? It deals with health and safety of the workers. There’s nothing more important than the Bahamian workers. So if you get in an accident, you will make sure put things in place so accidents won’t happen - prevent them. Typical example, how many businesses here in this country takes fire prevention serious? How many have fire extinguishers? How many have fire drills? That can be put in law. It’s not in the law.

“This is mandated... [we have to] get this done as quickly as we can, because it impacts health and safety in this country. And let me tell you how important this is. If you get hurt on the job and you can’t work, National Insurance got to pay you,  they have to pay for the medical expenses.

“For the past two years, we created what we call a gap analysis. What a gap analysis did it identified all of the laws of The Bahamas that, in fact, convention 155 and 187 and what are the gaps between what’s in the law and what’s not in the law? We have that, what’s called a gap analysis, now. We want to prove that gap analysis. What’s missing? That’s why you hear all these discussions. This is not in law. Let’s put it in law. So that’s what we’re doing here today. And my unit is a special project unit. My unit has been directed to make sure this gets done. The Minister of Labor and the Public Service Minister Pia Glover has directed me as the person. She wants this recommendation to the government by a certain period of time because the government want to put this into law by December of this year.”

Mr Farquharson said the Ministry of Labour and the Public Service is facilitating the process of “ratifying” the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) conventions 155, 183 and 187.

“C155 is an establishment of a national occupation health and work with policy in The Bahamas that governs every worker in our country. C187 is establishment of the framework. The policy says what we will do. The framework says how we will do it. And C183 is the one we’re going to do this afternoon. That deals with maternity protection for mothers and children.

“Once it’s ratified by the government, then the government has two years to put the recommendation into law. So that’s what we’re doing now. We’re putting the recommendations to the government. We say to the government, ‘In two years, we want everything we decide in the law. So, in order to do it, it comes under the version of consultation. Nothing can happen in The Bahamas unless we consult. So we are consulting with the private sector, the public sector and worker representative, to make sure that when it comes to [it] nobody can say we wasn’t involved. So over the next two days, yesterday and today, we look at the ILO, how it works in The Bahamas, how it’s effective to The Bahamas.”

Wellington Ferguson, CEO of Baha Health and Safety and a board certified safety professional managing 11 countries throughout the Caribbean, said having all the relevant parties in the same room conversing on inspections is sure to bring “a strong policy”.

He said: “There are different entities throughout The Bahamas that are responsible for occupational health and safety, and the good thing is now that we have everybody in the room. Before nobody talked to each other. But now having that conversation around ‘What do you do’ and how we can bring it together to form a collaboration approach is definitely fruitful. Like I said, it has been, personally a vision of mine to see these entities coordinating the way they are doing with this discussion. And I feel as if we should have a strong policy coming out of this meeting.

“I was a part of group two and we dealt primarily with the entities, as well as their obligations to the overall OSH policy and programming in the country. And so you had persons from environmental health, you have persons from National Insurance Board and persons from the Department of Labour, all in the room talking about what they do and how we can make this happen.

“We definitely had a strong debate around the inspections. The inspections and the enforcement thereof. And we see that there  are some things that was different based upon the National Insurance Act. There were some things that was different based upon the Bahamas Health and Safety Act. And so there was a lot of things where we identified gaps and we said, ‘Okay, this is how we can fill it, to strengthen those inspections because right now, we have the National Insurance Board, where they are reporting incidents and nothing is being done. And then we have the Department of Labour, where persons only report a concern and with reporting the concern, still there’s a gap. We’re not closing the gap. It’s always good to have the conversation.”