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Labour Ministry settles over 1,000 cases, recovers over $79M
A spike in labour related complaints was recorded last year by the Labour Department of the
Mr. Charles Ogle, Chief Labour Officer
Ministry of Social Protection.
This is according to Chief Labour Officer, Mr Charles Ogle, who said that as at December 23, 2015 there were 1,833 complaints.
By December 10, a total of 1,122 complaints were closed and the Department was able to recover a total of $79, 665,268 on employees’ behalf. “This is almost double what we would have collected in the previous year,” said Ogle as he delivered a presentation during the Social Protection Ministry’s end of year press conference last week.
The previous years, 2014 and 2013, saw the Labour Department dealing with 1,244 and 1,055 cases respectively.
Ogle pointed out that while it usually isn’t the desire of the Labour Department to take employers to court, this, at times, is the only way to effectively address some cases. “If we cannot come to an amicable settlement; if we cannot negotiate a solution to the various complaints that employees or former employees would bring to the Ministry, we have to prosecute them. We took 46 different employers to court on 267 charges (in 2015),” related Ogle.
This year will see the Department seeking to delink the Industrial Relations Department from the Occupational, Safety and Health Department. Workers, according to Ogle, were saddled with the work of two departments during the past year, “so we want to place more emphasis on specialisation.”
With this way forward, he disclosed that this year will see even more cases being addressed. He, during his presentation, informed that his Department is gearing to address more complaints, disputes and grievances in a timely manner during the course of the year.
This ambitious goal of the Labour Department to deal with more cases is being envisioned, despite a shortage of staffers which was in fact the challenge faced during the past year, Ogle admitted.
Dealing with industrial action was one of the many tasks of the Labour Department last year. And according to the Chief Labour Officer for 2015 there were a total of 191 strike actions of which 88 were in the sugar industry, one at the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, one at the University of Guyana and yet another at the Bosai Minerals Group.
“We were able to resolve all of these strikes,” boasted Ogle who went on to note that the Labour Department was also engrossed in the conducting of a number of seminars during the past year. These seminars, which were aimed at reaching out to employers and employees alike to bring awareness about the various labour legislations, amounted to 51 in 2015.
In addition to its awareness campaign, the Department also conducted inspections of work places throughout the country and countersigned collective labour agreement of which six were conditions of employments including wages and salaries, hours of works and general benefits.
The Department also countersigned one recognition agreement, according to Ogle.
But the work of the Labour Department did not stop there.
Ogle disclosed that his Department collaborated with the Ministry of Education to tackle truancy. This saw the Labour Department participating in six related exercises during the past year.
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