The Ministry of labor today activated the Labour Advisory Board, Tripartite Body and the National Child Labour Committee and Interest-Based Bargaining Stakeholders. These are important advisory bodies which should have been activated from 2012, but it just happened today. Minister of Labour Hugo Patt told us what they will advise on:
Hon. Hugo Patt - Minister of Labour
“Anything related to issues starting from the rights of a child, protecting a child, making sure that our children are not working under hazardous environment to issues affected trade unions and to the core of what is affecting us in terms of labour laws, in terms of labour issues, in terms of making our policies consistent with our international commitments, these are the supporting bodies that would actually make recommendations to the ministry and eventually leading it into cabinet and if necessary going into the house for the necessary amendments in terms of making our laws as much as possible plausible and as much as possible reflecting the real time environments we have today. We decided to make sure that the bodies are up and functional so that the actual work of the ministry becomes more productive and becomes more efficient for the needs that we have in the country. We want to make sure that everybody has equal voice, everybody has freedom to opine and everybody understands fully the decisions being taken by the board.â€
Now if it just sounds like more bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, it’s not. These bodies will look at major current issues impacting how and where you work under what conditions. The Minister gave us two examples:…
Hon. Hugo Patt - Minister of Labour
“Really the laws are sort of antiquated and so we have to make sure that our laws are reflective of the environment that we have today. Let’s take for instance the topic of child labour, we have the issue of the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association and their incompliance as it pertains to having a child working in the cane fields. And so while it might seem as a cultural practice, our international commitments are ones which we have to honour and so finding that thin lining of balance between our cultural practices and our international obligations is one that we have to deal with the National Child Labour Committee. When it comes to law that we have in particular and I want to make mention of the tourism industry which a booming industry and really the laws which we have in place are not reflective of the environment we have in tourism. So when ever we’re speaking about for instance a normal day of 8 working hours, you would have people going to the islands, going to the resorts and practically working for 3 or 4 weeks then getting 2 weeks off to make it plausible for them to come back and efficiently, economically for them to come back to their families. So these kinds of changes, we have to make sure that we have the laws in place.â€
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