Labour Inspectors do 4-Day Train the Trainers Child Labour Law Course
The Ministry of Labour has been partnering with the U.S. Department of Labour to strengthen systems to address child labour. As a part of the works being done, a curriculum for labour inspectors was developed and officially shared at a workshop held this week in Belize City. The training introduced the participants to the methodology and content of the curriculum and helps them to practice delivering lessons and leading exercises. Reporter Andrea Polanco shares more from today’s closing ceremony.
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Labour Inspectors now have a curriculum to guide them on how to monitor and enforce child labour laws. The manual will be used to help train inspectors, as well as other personnel directly involved in strengthening systems to address child labour laws. C.E.O in the Ministry of Labour Sharon Young says legislation is just one of the key areas that must be examined when looking at the issue of child labour in Belize.
Sharon Ramclam-Young
Sharon Ramclam-Young, C.E.O., Ministry of Labour
“The curriculum is tailored specifically for Belize to look at child labour issues in various sectors, whether it is agriculture, tourism, business and so forth. So, the design of the curriculum is very comprehensive and it has been vetted by our Labour Department and this is the first of such training. The Labour Act is not specific as to activities that are not allowed. So, there will be and we are in the process of defining those categories of activities that are not allowed. So, this is where we are at right now. It is a very timely exercise because we found that there are significant gaps in the Labour Act that then now allows us to improve on those gaps so we work towards protecting children. So, the Labour Act is really deficient in defining activities that would qualify as activities not allowed for children to engage in.”
The participants did a four-day training to learn how to identify the types of child labour and what they can do to help eliminate the problem. The trainers who received their certificates today are now equipped to go back to train others within their respective agencies to help tackle this issue. According to Young, they don’t know just how many children are in Belize’s labour force but this training and the curriculum will help to address many of these gaps.
Sharon Ramclam-Young
“This particular training will allow for these inspectors to go out into these industries and identify how long these children are engaged, what kind of work they are engaged in; whether or not they are engaged in hazardous kind of undertaking; whether it is in areas that border-line trafficking and abuse, so it ranges from identifying very simple exercise and tasks that children are engaged in to more sensitive types of engagements. They are now equipped to go out and actually get that –gather that baseline information. We need to understand how many children are actively engaged, at what time of the year – whether it is seasonal or when they are out of school when they engage in labour activities; whether it is all year. Those are the kinds of things they will now be equipped to do. They will be able to go out and gather that kind of data and then we will start to track the data whether it is increasing or decreasing. But we have to start from somewhere.”
Personnel from Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour, Immigration Department, Human Services, Police and the Social Security Board participated in the training of trainers’ workshop for labour inspectors. Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
