The Saint Lucia Bureau of Standards (SLBS) has, for the first time, assumed the role of co-secretariat, alongside the British Standards Institute, to steer and support the development of an International Standard for organizations, on modern slavery.
This initiative, which commenced in July 2023, is being conducted as part of the development work programme of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) under ISO/TC 309: Governance in Organizations.
‘Modern slavery’ is the broad term now used to describe a range of exploitative labour practices, which includes forced or compulsory labour, debt bondage and human trafficking.
Such exploitation practices range from poor and unlawful labour and employment practices to severe forms of exploitation such as human trafficking.
It is estimated that there are 40.3 million victims of modern slavery worldwide. Of these, 24.9 million are said to be exploited through forced labour, with the Latin America and Caribbean region being one of the regions identified as being highest risk.
Organizations of all sizes and sectors therefore need assistance in understanding how their activities and business relationships can wittingly or unwittingly be linked to modern slavery practices.
The established  guidance document will assist public and private organizations, particularly SMEs, which make up most of Saint Lucia’s businesses, to understand the risk of modern slavery on their operations, and to assist them to respond adequately to these risks.
These risks have the potential to not just affect the sustainability of our businesses, but importantly, represent a serious violation of people’s fundamental human and labour rights.
Through the implementation of this governance standard, other organizations along the supply chain can have demonstrable instances of human trafficking avoidance.
An awareness building seminar will be held on the 29th November 2023 at the Harbor Club hotel starting from 10:00 am.
This event will include local, regional and international technical experts presenting with their knowledge and experiences from supply chain and Human Trafficking challenges.
The discussion will include the importance of developing a standard for organizations to ensure their operations do not encourage or unknowingly participate in instances of Human Trafficking, Modern Slavery and Forced Labour activities.
SOURCE: Saint Lucia Bureau of Standards
Ok fine, then please label the Government of St. Lucia who is practicing it and let me explain how.
By allowing investor to come into the Island, secure their investment, granting them decades of tax exemptions, and what happens, they employ we locals, under pay you, fire you if you seek union representation on top of that they threaten you, NIC and IRS to jail you if you don’t pay your taxes, because our taxes are now being used to pay politicians who are supporting your title ‘Modern Slavery’
For the “development of an International Standard for organizations, on modern slavery”.
How ironic it is, that this is being steered and supported by the British Standards Institute. The same British who go around the commonwealth nations to propose opportunities to our qualified nurses, tradesmen, and other skilled workers to travel to the UK to be exploited by multinational cooperations and the British NHS.
How many of our skilled workers have migrated on this illusion of opportunity, only to get to the UK to find out that the wages paid to them would be siphoned back into the British economy via excessive taxation, exorbitant rent, extortionate utility bills, burdensome transportation fees, high food bills, extremely high cost of living, low quality of life and general coercive wealth extraction by a racist government system that is designed to harvest your skills and labour for their benefit.
When presented with any so called opportunity in the UK or western nation, always ask yourself and the host: “Why is it that they, a nation of 70 million or more, are recruiting skilled workers and labourers in a tiny St. Lucia (third world country, as they like to refer to us) of less than 200,000 people? It is because they always need to replenish their corporate plantations or economic zone with a fresh supply of enthusiastic but gullible stock (economic slaves). Once the existing supply of slaves (immigrants) recognise how much they have been duped by media and government propaganda, they quickly gather their meagre resources and flee to better countries, usually back to their homeland where greater freedom abounds. But this realisation only occurs when the reality of life abroad becomes clearly obvious after years of hard-working and toiling to scrape by a hand-to-mouth living with little sense of prosperity or economic progress for the individual making the sacrifice.
Realise that Globalisation, which is the economic mutation of capitalism, which was the unnatural development from slavery, which has its roots emanating out of feudalism, requires and will always require slave labour to work for a pittance. We seemingly have come full circle and now heading back to the latter, except this time it is technocratic. Everything else is an illusion, a smoke screen created with consumerism and political propaganda to keep us distracted and docile. Today, this form of slavery takes the form of debt, currency inflation and taxation, all of which have the same effect, which is wealth extraction and ultimately, subjugation.
Now tell me, how does a British Institution, (an extension of British Conglemeration) with a vested interest of it’s Country, help steer and support the development of an International Standard for organizations, on modern slavery in the St. Lucia. It’s like inviting the fox to guard the chicken coup.
Instead we should engage in a program of critical thinking to alert our citizenery, especially the professional and entrepreneurial classes, to help them make more informed decisions regarding the so called opportunity abroad, for voluntary exploitation.
We have thousands of St Lucians working for 3 to 5 EC dollars an hour is that not modern day slavery…