On-site visit by St. Vincent to Canada 

Theme: Occupational Health and Safety
Place and Date: Winnipeg, Canada – October 20 to 22, 2009

Three officers of the Department of Labour 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 Labour.  This model is completely voluntary and based on a collaborative approach were labour 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 labour officers of St. Vincent and the Grenadines stated a very concrete goal:  “The Department of Labour 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.”