Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2007, published 97th ILC session (2008)

Labour Clauses (Public Contracts) Convention, 1949 (No. 94) - Jamaica (Ratification: 1962)

The Committee notes with regret that the Government’s report has not been received. It hopes that a report will be supplied for examination by the Committee at its next session and that it will contain full information on the matters raised in its previous direct request, which read as follows:

The Committee takes note of the 1999 amendment to the Contractor-General Act, 1983 which provides for the establishment of a parliamentary commission, the National Contracts Commission (NCC), to oversee the process of award and implementation of government contracts and to ensure transparency and equity in the granting of such contracts. The Committee also notes the documentation on public procurement contained in the Government’s report, including the handbook of public sector procurement procedures, relevant cabinet or ministerial directives, the standard contracts for the procurement of goods and services, and the general conditions of contract (GCC) which are deemed to form an integral part of public procurement contracts. However, as the Committee had noted in some earlier comments, these documents contain no provisions which are directly connected with the application of this Convention. The Committee requests therefore the Government to specify the legislative or other text providing for the insertion of labour clauses in public contracts, their advertisement, and appropriate sanctions in case of non observance, as required under Articles 2, 4 and 5 of the Convention. Recalling that the inclusion of labour clauses in all the public contracts covered by the Convention does not necessarily call for the enactment of legislation but may also be realized by means of regulations to be issued by the NCC under section 23E of the 1999 amendment to the Contractor-General Act, 1983, or by way of administrative instructions, the Committee hopes that steps will soon be taken to bring national law and practice into line with the provisions of the Convention.

Part V of the report form. The Committee notes that, despite its repeated requests on this point, the Government has not supplied in recent years any information regarding the practical application of the Convention. In this connection, the Committee recalls that under Article 6 of the Convention and Part V of the report form governments are required to give a general appreciation of the manner in which the Convention is applied, including, for instance, extracts from official reports, information concerning the approximate number of workers covered by relevant legislation, etc. The report form, which was adopted by the Governing Body of the ILO, is the main channel through which the Committee may obtain all the necessary information in order to follow the evolution of the national law and practice in matters covered by the Convention. The Committee would therefore be grateful to the Government for supplying in its next report detailed information on the practical application of the Convention, including samples of public contracts, reports on the activities of the NCC, information from inspection services on the supervision and enforcement of national legislation and any other particulars bearing on the measures designed to implement the Convention.

Finally, the Committee seizes this opportunity to refer to this year’s General Survey which contains an overview of public procurement practices and procedures in so far as labour conditions are concerned and makes a global assessment of the impact and present-day relevance of Convention No. 94.