Montano: I have no control now — the matter is before Cabinet

However, at Thursday’s post Cabinet news conference at Whitehall, Montano said that he still had a "reasonable expectation" that the OSHA Bill would reach Parliament by the end of January.

He added that he hoped that both a superior OSHA Bill and the Workmen’s Compensation Bill would be proclaimed by the end of March/April next year.

Stressing that he had no command over the Cabinet or over the parliamentary agenda, Montano said, "I have done the best that I can and, in as quick as I could have possibly done it. And any further agitation on anybody’s part really is not going to make a difference to anything I could do at this point, he said, in response to threats from the union to protest the non-implementation of OSHA."

Told that the unions said they would shut down the country, Montano said that would have to be a matter for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

Montano said he took a note to Cabinet on OSHA and it had been referred to the Finance and General Purposes Sub-committee. He said if the committee had no difficulties with the note, the matter would come back to the Cabinet for final approval. Then it would go to the Legislative Review Committee which has a "lengthy agenda and I don’t know where it would be in that line up."

Montano said while he felt that the whole issue of OSHA and Workmen’s Compensation should be looked at on a holistic basis, he was advised by stakeholders that the two issues should be kept separately on a legislative basis. He has, therefore, delinked the two.