Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 1991, published 78th ILC session (1991)

Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111) - Dominican Republic (Ratification: 1964)

With reference to its previous comments, the Committee takes note of the information supplied by the Government in its report. It also refers to the observation made on the application of this Convention.

1. The Committee once again expresses the hope that, in the framework of the revision of the Labour Code, measures will be taken to amend section 210 thereof which provides that any woman who wishes to take up employment in an undertaking must prove, by means of a medical certificate, her physical fitness to carry out the work to be done in such employment. Given that this provision does not only refer to hazardous or harmful work (which are mentioned in section 217) and that this requirement only applies to women, the Committee requests the Government to examine ways of guaranteeing equality of treatment between men and women on this point in conformity with the Convention, by providing that the medical certificate attesting fitness for work be required for all workers irrespective of their sex, or by limiting, in consultation with the organisations of workers and employers, the physical fitness examination for women to cases where the work could endanger her health or pregnancy.

2. The Committee again requests the Government to communicate details on the measures adopted to facilitate the access of women to technical and vocational training given by institutions in this field, as well as statistical data, broken down by sex, on the rate of enrolment in these institutions and on the occupations for which training is given.

3. As for the public sector, the Government states that it is hoping to introduce a Bill on the civil service and administrative careers in the National Congress before its mandate expires on 16 August 1994. The Committee again hopes that this legislation will be able to be adopted in the near future and will contain provisions which expressly prohibit any discrimination in employment for this sector based on any of the reasons listed in the Convention. The Government also indicates that the labour authorities are preparing a report containing statistical data on the structure of employment in the public sector and that this will be sent to the Office in the shortest possible time. The Committee hopes that these statistics will indicate the number of women employed in the public administration and in state enterprises, including the number of women holding posts of responsibility and their percentage compared with the number of male public sector employees.