No breaches found as Labour Ministry inspects Liza Destiny FPSO

…inspection conducted to ensure compliance with safety, labour standards

In an effort to safeguard workers’ rights and promoting workplace safety in the oil and gas industry, a team from the Labour Ministry recently conducted a detailed inspection on board the FPSO Liza Destiny.
The physical inspection aimed at ensuring compliance with Guyana’s Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act 99:06, International Safety Standards, and national labour laws, was spearheaded by OSH Officer Ray Hosannah and Labour Officer Deniese Duncan.
During their recent visit, the team reviewed the drillship’s Health, Safety, Security, and Environment (HSSE) policies, training and competence of personnel, emergency response systems, risk assessments, waste management, and record-keeping practices.
In a brief interview with this publication, Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton disclosed that the inspection is the sixth executed this year as part of the Ministry’s routine visit.
On this point, Hamilton revealed that no breaches have been recorded thus far, which he noted signals compliance.
“The reports that I have seen in the ones that have happened, nothing suggests that there was any infraction as regards to standards at the level of OSH, nothing suggests that there were any labour breaches when I’m dealing with the reports”.
“… nothing suggests to me that there were any labour breaches identified by the staff that they had to intervene or they had to have a conversation with the employer for them to rectify,” the Minister added.
According to Hamilton, the visit further provided an opportunity for the Ministry’s representatives to engage directly with both management and employees on board, ensuring that all parties are well-informed of their roles and responsibilities under Guyana’s OSH Act, including the National Minimum Wage Order, working conditions, overtime regulations, termination of employment, probationary periods, notice periods for termination, and leave with pay.
“But the officers, they also normally will take time to engage these workers from both departments about our expectation and introduce the legislation to them and all of those issues regarding work standards, the issue about their leave and the issue about their entitlements and all of those things. So, it’s not just visiting, it is also interacting with people who work on the FPSO,” he added.

Training
As it relates to ramping up the number of trained professionals to conduct inspections, the Labour Minister indicated that Guyana has come a long way from not having any officers spearhead the exercise to now having roughly 16 officers.
He explained that the establishment of the state-of-the-art $20 million petroleum training facility at Lusignan, East Coast Demerara (ECD), Guyanese are no longer required to travel overseas to be certified- something which the Guyana Government is taking advantage of.
“Yes, the training will continue because the intention is to have the officers have all-round experience in all areas that they have to supervise and they have to investigate. My intention is to develop a cadre of specialist officers in all different sectors, so it’s not just across the spectrum, even though they would have had the training. I want to have officers who are specialists in a deliberate way in a sector,”.
“One of the important things is that now we can do this training in Guyana, so it allows us to train more persons at the time. Because there’s a facility in Lusignan that overseas-based Guyanese has established, so now we don’t have to send no staff to be trained, because we have the same facility in Guyana at the moment, so it allows for us to train more staff.” (G1)