Members of the Planning Committee for the Ninth International Labour Organization Meeting of Caribbean Labour Ministers held a series of meetings organizing the March 3-4, 2015 Conference. Pictured are some members of the committee: Chanelle Brown, Senior Assistant Secretary, Minister of Labour and National Insurance; Jennifer Morales, International Labour Organization; Robert Farquharson, Director of Labour; and Nicole Campbell, Permanent Secretary, Minister of Labour and National Insurance. Other members represented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration, Royal Bahamas Defence Force, Royal Bahamas Police Force, Bahamas Information Services, Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas (ZNS), the Ministry of Works, National Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Information Technology, the Ministry of Tourism and other related areas. (BIS Photo/Lindsay Thompson)
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NASSAU, The Bahamas – The Government of the
Commonwealth of the Bahamas is hosting the Ninth International Labour
Organization Meeting of the Caribbean Ministers of Labour in Nassau, to address
pertinent issues impacting labour relations in the region.
The meeting will take place March 3-4, 2015
at the British Colonial Hilton. The Rt. Hon Perry Christie, Prime Minister of
the Commonwealth of The Bahamas will deliver the Keynote Address and officially
open the Meeting. Guy Ryder,
Director-General of the ILO, will also address the Opening Ceremony.
Minister of Labour and National Insurance the
Hon. Shane Gibson underscored the importance of hosting such a high-level
meeting.
“The Government of The Bahamas is extremely
pleased to host this very important meeting of the ILO Ministers of Labour
under the theme: ‘Decent Work for Sustainable Development.’
“With a renewed focus on the Decent Work,
CARICOM Colleagues will discuss a number of critical issues including: creating
job opportunities, developing skills for youth employment and climate
change,” Mr. Gibson said.
The representatives of 13 CARICOM
member-states and 9 territories, will meet in sessions to also hear the
perspective from public and private investor representatives from the
Governments of Canada, China, the Association of Caribbean States and the CEO
of the Republic Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.
The Meeting will bring together Ministers
with responsibility for
Labour, Permanent Secretaries, and high-level officials of the English-
and Dutch-speaking Caribbean, as well as representatives of the
Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL), and the Caribbean Employers'
Confederation (CEC).
Labour Ministers will discuss the CARICOM and
ILO
partnership and the implementation of decent work in national and
regional policy agenda, as well as the regional tripartite social
dialogue mechanism.
The Meeting follows the call by Caribbean delegates at the ILO's 18th
American Regional Meeting in Lima, Peru, held October 13-16, 2014, for
policies that would mitigate the impact of climate change on the
economies of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the region.
A
session entitled ‘Creating job opportunities and developing skills for
youth employment and productivity in the Caribbean’ will explore the
issue of youth unemployment in the Caribbean region with factors of the
real economy, international and regional partners such as Republic Bank,
Colleges and Institutes Canada, and the Association of Caribbean States
(ACS).
The first ILO Caribbean Labour Ministers'
Meeting was also held in Trinidad and Tobago in 1996. Subsequent meetings
have been held in Guyana (1998), Jamaica (2000), Barbados (2002), The Bahamas
(2004), Trinidad and Tobago (2007), and Guyana (2010).
This 2015 ILO meeting comes on the heels of
the Twenty-Sixth Intersessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of
Government of the Caribbean Community, February 26-27, 2015 in Nassau.