Rules governing occupational safety and health will soon be put in place to ensure compliance with the Safety and Health at Work (SHaW) Act, Minister of Labour, Social Security and the Third Sector Colin Jordan has revealed.
With Parliament set to pass amendments to the SHaW Act in a matter of days, Jordan said this is to be followed shortly by necessary regulations that are to be put into force once the Bill clears the Senate.
“The Safety and Health at Work Act which we call SHaW, has been in place for a number of years, but the regulations have not been in place and the labour department has placed quite a lot of emphasis on making sure that we have regulations to address matters like sanitary conveniences, water, PPE (personal protective equipment) and a whole range of actions detailing how those actions are to be done, how the facilities are to be set out and how workers are to be dealt with in terms of the broader framework of the Safety and Health at Work Act.
“So once the Bill passes the Senate then that will come into force and the regulations will also come into force. There will be outstanding, one regulation, which depends on the passage of the Bill that is currently before the House and that, is the right to refuse dangerous tasks,” he said.
Jordan explained that while the right to refuse dangerous tasks was in the Act, there was no regulation on it and he feared that in the absence of necessary rules there could be some “grey areas”.
“Where there is absence of regulations sometimes you get grey areas and persons not sure what to do. But those are particularly persons who stick to the letter of the law and not embrace the spirit of the law.
“But we have to have regulations . . . So for some we have to make sure the details, everything is good print, written down, codified so that persons know how to operate,” he said.
Jordan was addressing some staff of the Banks (Barbados) Breweries Ltd., officials from the Labour Department and the Barbados National Standards Institution (BNSI), ahead of a tour of the brewery’s production plant on Friday.
The tour was designed to give officials a first-hand view of the occupational safety and health initiatives and procedures the company had in place.
Jordan, who recently returned from the May 27 to June 11 labour conference of the International Labour Orgnaisation (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland, said while there were four main areas of discussion, occupational safety and health was featured highly.
He said while there have been several years of “intense” discussions and “a lot of to and fro” on whether or not to include occupational safety and health as a fundamental principle and right at work, it was decided at the international labour conference that this should be the case.
“The international labour conference, which is the highest decision-making body of the International Labour Organisation made a decision to add occupational safety and health to the framework of fundamental principles and rights at work,” said Jordan.
“What that means is that every member state of the International Labour Organisation is now bound, whether or not you ratified the convention. There are two conventions that have been included in the fundamental principles – convention 155, which speaks to occupational safety and health and then a promotional framework for [occupational safety], which is convention 187,” he reported.
“Barbados is a member state and we are bound by that. We didn’t need that to help us to focus on it, but I am just indicating to you the thinking that is taking place across the world at this time,” he explained.
He suggested that perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic helped some countries to recognise the importance of occupational safety and health at work, and to better “focus on people, their value and their worth”. (MM)
