‘Healthy worker, a nation’s most valuable asset’

A healthy worker is a country’s most valuable asset and governments should put health before wealth. These were some of the conclusions from an International Labour Organisation (ILO) webinar titled, The World of Work in the time of COVID-19: An ILO Caribbean High-Level Virtual Roundtable, on Monday.

St Kitts and Nevis (SKN) Minister of Nevis Affairs, Labour, Social Security and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Vance Amory, gave an update on the measures taken by his government since the beginning of the covid19 outbreak, including an emergency relief grant. He said there were difficulties in accounting for workers in the informal economy.

He said, as with many countries in the Caribbean, SKN was heavily dependent on tourism, and this external dependence would make it harder for the country to recover.

TT’s Labour and Small Enterprise Development Minister Jennifer Baptiste-Primus said the measures taken by the government built around the four pillars of the ILO’s covid19 response. These are stimulating the economy and employment; supporting enterprise, jobs and incomes; protecting workers in the workplace; and, relying on social dialogue for solutions.

She said there were challenges in disbursing emergency relief funds especially when it came to accounting for self-employed persons. Caribbean Employers Confederation President Wayne Chen said most regional governments had resorted to direct cash grants to citizens and loans to small businesses as part of their measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

He said these were expensive and might not be sustainable. He said many businesses were in survival mode. He said because Caribbean countries are mainly dependent on tourism, their economic recovery would be tied to that of their North American and European trading partners. Chen said governments need to balance the health and safety of workers with the health and safety of the economy, as neither can survive without the other. He said this time where many employees were sitting at home should not be wasted. He said there were opportunities for upskilling and adding to people’s baskets of skills, development of the creative industries to lessen reliance on one revenue stream and moving education online, among others.

He said this is the time for governments to take a bold approach and spend money on the things they’ve always talked about but never found the will or resources to implement. Caribbean Congress of Labour Chairman Andre Lewis said the situation exposed the shortfalls which many workers now considered essential had been working under.

He said if workers were being paid a decent living wage, they would have had some savings and there would be less or no need for assistance grants. He called for accountability, a moratorium on loans and rent, counselling services for workers, and an end to violence and discrimination. He said this is the time for discussion of universal basic income and called on countries to put health before wealth.

ILO Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Vinicius Pinheiro said Caribbean countries will be living with the effects of the pandemic for at least a year, so there was time to begin social dialogue.

He said the most valuable asset is a healthy worker, and measures to protect them should be paramount.