The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

REGULATIONS governing health and safety in the Bahamian workplace are being finalised and could be presented to Parliament soon, Labour Minister Shane Gibson has said.

Mr Gibson made the little-noticed announcement in Parliament last week. “The regulations for the Health and Safety at Work Act are being finalised by the Attorney General’s Office, and I anticipate that these will be completed very shortly and brought before Parliament,” he said.

“We passed legislation already, but regulations drafted by my Ministry when I was minster back in 2006 leading into 2007, the previous administration didn’t see it fit to bring these regulations into force.

“One of my constituents fell to his death from a scaffold while working for a construction company a couple of years ago, and the fact we don’t have these regulations in place yet make it very difficult for us to monitor and regulate this industry.

“Health and safety is a very important factor in the work place, and hopefully once we are able to compete these regulations throughout the AG’s Office we would have them tabled,” Mr Gibson said.

Edsel Armbrister, director of The Bahamas Safety Alliance (BSA), said workplace safety regulations should be at the “top of the to do list”.

“That should be a priority. We are very far behind on work place safety. We could have been much further ahead on this issue,” said Mr Armbrister.”You look around, you see guys up on construction sites with no hard hats, on roof tops with no scaffolding around, with no safety harness and they could get seriously hurt if they fall. This is a daily occurrence throughout the Bahamas.

“We are too reactive on this issue. It’s not until someone gets seriously hurt, then we say we need to implement safety regulations.”