BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

While the glob­al cri­sis caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has ul­ti­mate­ly led to short, medi­um and long-term dis­rup­tions in the labour mar­ket, one thing must re­main a top pri­or­i­ty—work­ers’ health.

This, ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Con­gress of Labour, An­dre Lewis. Lewis raised the point em­phat­i­cal­ly dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al round­table dis­cus­sion ti­tled, “The World of Work in a Time of COVID-19,” host­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO).

Lewis one of the pan­elists on yes­ter­day’s dis­cus­sion said: “Work­ers were at the fore­front of the re­sponse to this cri­sis and that em­ploy­ers must place health be­fore wealth and peo­ple be­fore prof­its.”

He added that it was some­thing that must not be for­got­ten. Lewis al­so al­lud­ed to the pos­si­ble un­fair acts by some em­ploy­ers who would seek to hold ran­som em­ploy­ees en­ti­tle­ments dur­ing the pan­dem­ic who can­not at­tend work due to gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed re­stric­tions and lock­downs, say­ing it must not be al­lowed to hap­pen.

ILO Amer­i­c­as Di­rec­tor, Vini­cius Car­val­ho Pin­heiro, en­dorsed Lewis’s prospect re­stat­ing a re­sponse to the cur­rent cri­sis was to en­sure in­vest­ment in work­ers’ health, not just as an im­me­di­ate counter but al­so for the fu­ture.

Pan­elists al­so in­clud­ed Min­is­ter of Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus who rep­re­sent­ed the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and spoke ex­ten­sive­ly of the so­cial sup­port mea­sures ac­tive­ly in place in the coun­try as it seeks to ad­dress the em­ploy­ment and so­cio-eco­nom­ic threats is­su­ing from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. She high­light­ed the amal­ga­mat­ed ef­forts by the Gov­ern­ment and stake­hold­ers in the coun­try, to en­sure the health and safe­ty of the work­force and by ex­ten­sion, the pop­u­la­tion. She al­so ar­tic­u­lat­ed the fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions that were be­ing made by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T to tide the na­tion over this cri­sis.

As such, Bap­tiste-Primus not­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­cent­ly-ap­point­ed 22-mem­ber re­cov­ery com­mit­tee cho­sen to steer the coun­try back to sta­bil­i­ty post-COVID-19.

Oth­er pan­el­lists at yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al dis­cus­sion in­clud­ed St Kitts and Nevis Min­is­ter of Labour, So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty, and Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal Af­fairs with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Nevis Af­fairs, Vance Amory, Wayne Chen, Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Em­ploy­ers’ Con­fed­er­a­tion and Di­rec­tor of the ILO De­cent Work Team and Of­fice for the Caribbean, Clau­dia Co­en­jaerts, who served in the ca­pac­i­ty mod­er­a­tor.