Before she became a Minister in the current coalition government Simona Broomes had come to public attention as a crusader for reining in the vice of Trafficking in Persons (TIP). Her familiarity with the gold mining industry had positioned her to observe and eventually to come to understand the movement of mostly young women to mining shops in the interior to serve as sex slaves. What brought her to public attention was the fact that her hands-on approach to fighting the scourge of human trafficking coincided with an official indifference to the phenomenon and perhaps not surprisingly it was the United States government that recognised and publicly honored her as one of the 2013 Trafficking In Per-sons (TIP) Report Heroes.
Her subsequent appointment as Junior Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection and her assignment to labour issues appears to have been something of a smooth transition from her pursuits in the interior. In the months since her appointment she has attracted public attention for her crusading approach to workers’ rights. She appears to have little appetite for bureaucracy and what she lacks in experience in the ways of government she seeks to compensate for in sheer energy and enthusiasm.
In recent months she has not only gone to some private sector workplaces and exposed what she insists are instances of serious infringement of the country’s labour laws, which in many instances amounts to exploitation of workers, but has also made the point that there are instances in which state agencies also need to get their act together as far as safety and health, particularly, are concerned.
It has, too, not taken her long to transform her own Brickdam office into a ‘clinic’ of sorts, where employers and employees can settle differences with official guidance from labour officers.
In large measure, she blames the existing state of affairs on the indifference of the previous administration to the enforcement of the country’s labour laws. In an interview with Stabroek News some weeks ago she said that it was the posture of the previous government that had allowed the situation to fester. On the one hand, she says, the authorities seemed altogether unmindful of insisting that safety and health laws be observed; on the other, mandatory reports into workplace accidents appears to have been officially discouraged. “What we inherited was, quite frankly, an embarrassment.”
Her real challenge is that she has chosen to take on what, historically, have been some of the most intractable problems in employer/employee relations… like the long-running scandal of some employers simply refusing to pay in their employees’ NIS contributions and denial of leave entitlement and terminal benefits. If others may be sceptical she does not question her own stamina for the task.
After she had completed her walkabout in the commercial area of Georgetown a few weeks ago Broomes had said that she was concerned over the number of instances in which there appeared to be no formal contract between employer and employee. “It was as if there was no connection, as if the employee did not exist. We can’t go on like this. We can’t live in the 18th century.”
Broomes says she wants to work with the labour movement and the private sector though there is evidence that the two institutions have themselves, over the years, been blissfully ignoring the problems in the work force to which she is now drawing attention.
