It looks to the needs of working people worldwide, and the International Labor Organization has launched a program in Belize which should offer some relief to those living with aids who continue to work, often in environments where discrimination is widespread. So far, there have been 14 organizations that have signed onto the training program and today the Belize City Council joined them. The ILO's Sheila Middleton says they are targeting the workplace because it is in this area that HIV/Aids takes its most devastating toll.
Sheila Middleton, ILO
"When you look at the statistics for HIV and Aids, the people that are becoming infected with HIV and Aids are the people in their productive prime and their reproductive years. So HIV/Aids can have a big impact on the workforce because these are people that are working and if people start getting sick because they're not getting treatment or going to get voluntary testing to know their status it can have a great impact on the economy of Belize."
Colwin Flowers, City Administrator
"We will be sensitizing them as to the disease, how they should be treating each other, how not to discriminate and that the worker has a right, a fundamental right, to remain in the workplace and not to be stigmatized and to enjoy the rest of time that they have left. The training is very important without which we would have segregation and loss of efficiency. You would also have stigmatization you would people trying to remove people from the workplace and that we cannot have. That would have a serious impact on our productivity especially if you are dealing with an experienced worker and a highly skilled worker who is affected by the disease."
Sheila Middleton,
"We've signed the partnership agreement so both parties know what their contribution will be to the implementation of the project. What happens next is that each workplace will be developing an HIV committee that will oversee the development of a policy as well as how smoothly the program runs. That committee will be trained in HIV/Aids education as well as how to develop policy; what are some of the things that you should put in."
The ILO-HIV/Aids workplace education program wraps in 2006.
