The views expressed herein are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of One News SVG.
A man has died after falling from a four-storey building under construction in Villa. The circumstances are still being investigated. The incident is a reminder, however, for us to keep health and safety at the forefront of construction. Generally speaking, and not necessarily related to this particular incident at Villa, too many construction sites in St Vincent and the Grenadines operate with poor supervision, inconsistent safety standards, and a culture where workers are sometimes treated as if injury and death are “part ah de wuk.”. Construction carries risks, yes, but what matters is whether those risks were managed in the way a responsible employer and contractor are expected to manage them.
We have all observed that SOME persons who are doing construction work take little care for their safety or the contractors or employers do note care about their hired hands. Knowing this, we must ask ourselves as citizens, whether many incidents were preventable, and whether our approach in St Vincent and the Grenadines to construction safety is serious enough to prevent the next death.
To help Vincentians understand what the law expects in situations like this, I will explain the relevant principles in plain language. In tort law, one major principle is the employer’s own duty of care to workers. The common law says an employer must take reasonable care for the safety of employees. This duty is not absolute, meaning the employer is not automatically liable for every accident, but it is also not an option. The employer must act with what the law calls due care and skill. In practical terms, that duty includes making sure the workforce is competent for the tasks to be done, ensuring adequate tools and safety equipment are provided and maintained, organizing a safe system of work (with effective supervision), and providing a reasonably safe place of work, including safe access and exit from risky areas.
Many persons on these sites often say “Well me nah use that, me feel uncomfortable” but, when a job involves hazards, such as construction where persons have to work at certain heights on multi-storey structures or working near electricity, the law expects the employer to plan for those hazards, provide the proper safety equipment, and enforce its use, not merely hope that workers will “be careful.”
An important point in construction is that the employer’s duty to employees is described as what we call in the law “non-delegable”, meaning they cannot simply escape their duty by saying, “a contractor handled that part.” In other words, an employer cannot subcontract the responsibility to keep employees reasonably safe. If an employer puts workers into danger without proper protections and supervision, the law can treat that as negligence even if someone else was also involved on the site. This is important to note because construction projects usually involve multiple layers of responsibility, and without this principle, accountability could be endlessly passed around and around.
The second major principle is vicarious liability. This is where the law makes a business legally responsible for any injury or harm that may have been caused by the negligence of its employee when the employee was acting in the course of employment. The company does not have to personally commit the wrongful act to be liable. The reason behind this is that a business benefits is better placed to insure against losses than an individual worker. Vicarious liability exists so that an innocent victim is not left “running behind” compensation from a person who may have the means to pay.
In construction, disputes often arise about whether a person is truly an “employee” or an “independent contractor,” because employers are generally liable for the torts of employees but not usually liable for the torts of genuine independent contractors. However, the law is concerned with reality, not labels. Courts look at factors like control, integration into the business, who supplies equipment, whether the person works regularly as part of the company’s operation, and who directs the manner of the work. A worker can be called a “contractor” on paper but function like an employee in practice. Even where someone is truly an independent contractor, that does not magically remove all responsibility from those who control the site, set the system, and profit from the work, especially where workers are exposed to obvious, serious risks that should have been managed through basic safety measures.
My Vincentian citizens, the wider issue is not simply who is at fault in a single incident, but whether our country tolerates a construction environment where risk is managed so casually, as if we do not care about our construction workers. Safety enforcement is weak. Falls from height, inadequate fall protection, unsafe scaffolding, poor supervision, and electrical hazards are not new and mysterious dangers, they are very much predictable, whether you are seasoned or not.
We need inspection and enforcement that is real enough to change behaviour, because a safety rule that is never enforced is only decoration.
Back to today’s incident at Villa: The investigation into today’s death must proceed carefully and fairly, and no one should rush to condemn without facts as we often do in sweet SVG. As the facts emerge, these are the common law standards that the public should keep in mind, that a worker is owed reasonable safety.
Development cannot be measured only in concrete and steel,it must also be measured in whether the people building the country are protected while doing it.
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One News SVG 