After a Decade of Delay, OSH Bill Hits Senate Snag

After more than a decade of waiting, the long-anticipated Occupational Safety and Health Bill has finally reached the Senate, but now, it’s facing fresh scrutiny and unexpected delays. Two weeks on, the legislation is still stuck in the upper house, raising concerns about whether the process is stalling while workers and employers continue without critical protection. But according to Union Senator Glenfield Dennison, the holdup isn’t as simple as Senate inaction. Speaking alongside fellow independent senators today, he suggested the real issues run deeper, pointing to broader concerns about the bill itself and the process behind it.

 

Glenfield Dennison, Union Senator

“It is in Senate Committee for two weeks, 2014 to now, to April and two weeks in the Senate. What languishing in Senate are you speaking about. I want that it to be clear to the public. The OSH bill has been long time coming, over a decade. Don’t drop that on me, I don’t want nobody suggest that it is me holding up the OSH. And I don’t have two weeks to sit down, all day everyday. So lets take that narrative and throw it in the trash. In the OSH, the definition of domestic work and domestic workers created a situation where it was clear that the Bill required that the law applies to domestic workers. In section three of the OSH they made a clear exemption, this does not apply to domestic workers. So, my mind could not reconcile that section three of the bill with the definition section. It contradicts. That is the one blatant and picked up by the public, oh we stopped it because it does not include domestic workers. That is just the tip of the iceberg.”

 

Senator Pitts Takes Aim at Musa as OSH Bill Delays Drag On

 

UDP Senator, Sheena Pitts also weighed in on the delays with the Occupational Safety and Health Bill at the Senate level. Pitts was more critical of the Ministry of Labor and its administrative team, including Minister Kareem Musa. She also pointed to the omission of domestic workers in the proposed legislation as one of the primary concerns raised in the upper house.

 

Sheena Pitts, UDP Senator

“It is so unfortunate that even the minister does not understand the legislation, that the CEO, the Labor Commissioner and other persons who attended the Senate to hear from us and take questions, you know what they told us, we cant answer that right now. We hear the debate. We hear some of the concerns. The minister is not in the country. We cant answer right now. So when they say the Senate is stalling the Bill. I can tell you and I speak for all Senators and the President of the Senate. We are not stalling the Bill. They are not prepared to address the myriad of issues all senators raised. One of the major issues, we signed on to the Convention for the Elimination for Discrimination Against Women.  It says we are to promote women. You know what the OSH says, domestic workers are not covered under the OSH Bill. You know who domestic workers are, women.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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