Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:58 AM
Jan 03, 2016 News
– Chief Labour Officer
Like recurring decimals, many young men, some older ones, too, but very few women, have ventured into the mining areas of Guyana with promises of very attractive remuneration from some employers who have been purportedly reaping the benefits of sporadic booms in the mining industry.
The trickle down effects however do not always materialise as promised. Moreover, many complaints have reached this publication from different levels of workers who were mostly recruited and verbally promised specified remuneration. Some claimed that even the working conditions were nothing that was promised but they persevered with comforting thoughts that the pay would be worth the discomfort.
But with no inked contract to force their employers to pay what was promised many of these workers have ended up at this publication pouring their hearts out about being robbed by uncaring employers. The conversations usually end with the workers being asked to visit the Ministry of Labour and later the Ministry of Social Protection to make a complaint and have the matter resolved at that level.
But according to Chief Labour Officer, Charles Ogle, addressing such issues is in fact not an easy task for his Department. In fact at the Ministry’s end of year press conference last week, Ogle said, “We have to work on that; it is a serious challenge.”
He continued, “We are having serious challenges in the mining area because they have ad hoc arrangements; they don’t follow any plan; there are no planned arrangements in terms of having a contract, it is more or less job work for services.”
Compounding the state of affairs, according to Ogle, is that employers and employees alike are always on the move. “We can hardly put a track on them. We try to collaborate with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and hopefully this year we could see and ease that,” said Ogle.
“When we turn up to the different addresses provided sometimes they are not there. The landlord says they just keep moving. Even though we are filing charges and we want to prosecute we are not able to locate them to serve summons,” Ogle said.
He nevertheless related, without offering numbers, that the Labour Department has for the past year, been able to take before the court, several cases. “We have several of them in court,” said Ogle who however noted that sometimes the work of the Department is constrained by the complaining workers themselves.
According to him, one employee who had filed a complaint since in 2013 only turned up at the Ministry recently to find out about the status of the matter. “This is one of the areas we have to look at in terms of bringing some sort of relief to the workers but they also have to help us,” said the Chief Labour Officer.
For this New Year, he noted that keen focus will be made to collaborate more closely with the GGMC since GGMC officers are
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