The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas faces “significant constraints” in upholding workplace health and safety laws and standards because there are just seven labour inspectors to cover the entire country.

The country’s Decent Work Country Programme 2021-2026, which has been seen by Tribune Business, said “data limitations” and the failure to share statistics only worsened the lack of enforcement as this made it difficult to identify companies with a high frequency of workplace accidents.

“There are significant constraints on labour inspection capacity in The Bahamas,” the report said.”The Department of Labour has just seven permanent labour inspectors responsible for inspection activities across the entire archipelago.

“Four inspectors are located in New Providence, one in Abaco, one in Grand Bahama, and one in Andros that also covers the Berry Islands. Labour inspectors carry out workplace visits, both on their own initiative and in response to complaints.

“Inspectors aim to prioritize high-risk workplaces – such as large construction sites – but there is no systematic application of a unit-wide strategic compliance approach and inspection activities are primarily reactive, not proactive.”

Turning to the data gaps, the report added: “Severe data limitations prevent an adequate assessment of enforcement outcomes, as well as impeding operational effectiveness - for example, data to inform a proactive risk-based inspection approach - and contributing to significant gaps in the wider labour market information and analysis system.

“The lack of systematic data sharing between the Department of Labour and the National Insurance Board (NIB) impedes effective co-ordination in relation to occupational safety and health - for example, identifying workplaces with a high incidence of occupational health and safety (OSH) accidents.”

To address this issue, the Bahamas’ Decent Work Country Programme 2021-2026 said the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and its partners will help to build the necessary capacity at the Department of Labour.

“The ILO will provide initial advisory support to the Department of Labour and the National Tripartite Council in relation to the review and, where possible, the implementation of measures to reduce the scope of the labour inspection unit’s mandate in order to enhance its focus on core preventative and compliance activities, and optimise scarce human resources,” it said.

The report suggested that the Industrial Relations Act be reformed “to eliminate the role of labour inspectors in supervising certain internal trade union procedures, or consider streamlining or re-assigning to another agency some or all of the administrative tasks associated with work permits for foreign workers”.

“The ILO will also provide training and technical support for the implementation of a ‘strategic compliance’ model for labour inspection in The Bahamas, drawing on the ILO’s extensive range of technical tools and expertise in developing and operationalising strategic compliance plans for labour inspection,” the report added.

“In this context, the ILO will facilitate technical training for the labour inspection unit to design and support compliance interventions, including proactive education, information and advisory activities as well as interventions oriented towards detection.”