Occupational Health and Safety
Requesting country | Providing country |
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Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | Canada |
Three officers of the Department of Labor of St. Vincent and the Grenadines participated in an on-site visit to the HRSDC (Ministry of Labor) central office in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The main aim of the mission was to observe the implementation of the intervention model to be able to adapt it to St. Vincent in an effort to strengthen the inspection mechanism within the Department of Labor. This model is completely voluntary and based on a collaborative approach were labor officers work with an employer to help identify the hazards and needs of the workplace.
As stated by the participants the objectives of the cooperation were fulfilled since they were able to observe all the stages of the model in a very practical way. They visited three workplaces with health and safety officers responsible for implementing the model and witnessed firsthand the interaction between managers and workers and the safety officers during the various stages of the application of the model.
After the visit and based on the Canadian experience, the labor officers of St. Vincent and the Grenadines stated a very concrete goal: “The Department of Labor would try to develop a modified intervention model on occupational safety and health and approach the most at risk businesses to implement internal safety plans. Our first approach would be to target businesses in manufacturing and agricultural sectors to assess their openness and/or readiness to implement such plans. The aim being to show business that creating safe workplaces would not only benefit the employee but would improve productivity and hence benefit the employer as well.”