Private sector entities that flout the country’s labour laws should not be eligible to tender for state contracts, Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection Simona Broomes had declared in her Tuesday August 18 budget presentation in the National Assembly.
And while Broomes has won backing from two senior private sector officials for her insistence that the business community comply with labour regulations, including those that address safety and health, pay and other conditions of work, both officials with whom Stabroek Business spoke said they believed the solution to the problem reposed in ensuring that the requisite oversight be put in place.
“Personally, I’d like to see all of the inspection-related mechanisms be put in place and the penalties that exist under the law applied in order to address this issue of the transgression of labour laws,” President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Lance Hinds told Stabroek Business.
GCCI Vice President Vishnu Doerga told this newspaper that while the chamber had no wish to see “an uneven playing field” where entities that live within the law have to compete against others who are unmindful of complying, the regulatory and oversight entities must be equipped to carry out their functions.
Broomes, who has responsibility for labour, is fast building a reputation for tough talk against what she described in her budget speech as “bullyism” by management.
In her address in the National Assembly Broomes alluded to cases in which “workers are afraid to convey their concerns to Labour Officers due to fear of victimization and in worst cases dismissal.”
And in a thinly veiled threat that government will move to take action against the transgressors, the minister described the situation as ‘unacceptable” adding that “such conduct by employers, be they local or foreign will not be tolerated… If you are found in breach of the fundamental rights of workers you will encounter the full force of the law,” she declared.
In her budget presentation Broomes alluded to private sector employers whom she said seemed fixated on paying the minimum wage or barely above, a circumstance which “will soon be addressed when the minimum wage is adjusted following consultation with the relevant stakeholders.”
Her reference to employer transgression of labour laws comes in the wake of what she says was a slew of complaints from workers on issues ranging from conditions of work that impinge on safety and health to the withholding of wages often for the most flippant reasons. In an earlier interview with this newspaper the minister said her office had been engaged in a number of initiatives aimed at “righting wrongs” associated with issues that include discrepancies in the payment of salaries and overtime. Stabroek Business is aware of cases in which Minister Broomes’ intervention resulted in long-standing pay issues being rectified.
Alluding to “some employers” who “expect their employees to offer faithful service without pay,” Broomes said, “such injustices have prevailed because our government institutions and primarily the then Ministry of Labour had been emasculated by the previous administration.”
The minister’s remarks come against the backdrop of numerous complaints that have reached this newspaper over several years of local business entities including a foreign-run mining company with state shareholding that have been guilty of serious transgression of safety and health and other labour laws.
