President of the NTUCB calls on PM Briceno to rush the OSH

Today’s tragic incident has reignited the campaign for the OSH Bill.  The Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Bill has been in the pipeline for several years, but its implementation continues to be stalled. The Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) and the National Trade Union Congress of Belize (NTUCB) have completed a final draft of the piece of proposed legislation, which seeks to improve the safety condition of workers. However, the President of the NTUCB, Luis Luke Martinez, says the government is dragging its feet on the issue. He spoke to Love News about the unfortunate loss of yet another life on the job, and calls on the Prime Minister to rush the OSH. 

Luis Luke Martinez, President, NTUCB: “And obviously we will continue to have these type of deadly situations as long as there isn’t an OSH legislation. That’s important. It’s important to every country and it should be important in Belize. I note that this government has OSH in their Plan Belize agenda. But for some reason it seems as if it has been placed there just as decoration. We met with the Prime Minister a few months ago which we reported to you all and OSH was on that agenda. It was on top of the agenda and the Prime Minister had committed to us that we would have seen the OSH the lights of the OSH in the month of September. We are in October going on to the end of October and the end of the year in just a few days. I’ve also mentioned that we’ve written to the Minister of Labour to get an audience with him to discuss a lot of issues that we think shouldn’t exist under his portfolio and again tapping those issues with OSH enactment. So we finally met with the minister two days ago and he has given a commitment of two months. And I mentioned to him two days ago that for every day this government holds back on enacting OSH we’ll continue to experience tragedies on the work site. And not long after I mentioned that to him, we’re here discussing OSH.”