The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The former Bacardi plant’s owners yesterday pledged to “move forward” with establishing a high-end IT school, having enlisted the company responsible for the Bahamas’ e-passport and border control systems as its project partner.

Tennyson Wells, principal in the Source River investor group, told Tribune Business they had teamed up with Indusa Global on a venture that would involve an annual $1.5 million operating budget.

While acknowledging that the target date for the school’s opening had been pushed back yet again, this time to September 2014, Mr Wells described its potential economic impact as “huge”.

With an initial 100-strong student intake for an 11-month course, the former Cabinet Minister said the partners planned to develop a certified Bahamian IT workforce that would both attract new businesses to this nation and encourage local firms to end outsourcing practices.

Acknowledging that this would require buy-in from both the Government and private sector, Mr Wells said they aimed to emulate Indusa’s existing Caribbean Institute of Technology, which has graduated 12,000-16,000 students over the past 16 years.

“We still have that under review and are developing a budget for it,” Mr Wells said of the IT school, plans for which were first revealed by Tribune Business in March 2013.

“We’re going to move forward with it. We were trying for the first part of this year, but don’t see that happening before September. If we could get it set up, it will be huge.”

He confirmed the partnership with Indusa, which supplies the Government’s e-passport, visa, work permit and border control products and systems, plus analyses and compiles Immigration entry card data.

“They’re tying up some loose ends with the Government now in what they do already,” Mr Wells said of Indusa.

“The one [school] they set up originally was supposed to be here, but they set it up in Jamaica in 1998. It’s produced 12,000 jobs, high-end IT jobs, alone. They want to set up the same thing here.”

Jamaica, he added, had used the IT-educated workforce produced by Indusa’s Caribbean Centre of Technology to attract call centre operations, plus software developers and programmers.

Building a similarly qualified workforce in the Bahamas could help steer this nation in the same direction, attracting value-added, high margin companies to its shores.

This would also complement the Bahamas’ services-based economy and well established communications infrastructure, and counterbalance its traditionally high operating costs.

Mr Wells hinted that he and Indusa were also looking to build an IT-educated workforce to aid their own ambitions in the Bahamas.

“We’re involved together in some projects that we plan on bringing on stream here, and that kind of technology is going to be needed,” he told Tribune Business, declining to go into detail on these “projects”.

“We need that kind of expertise otherwise we will have to bring it in. We want to train Bahamians to do it. That’s the objective.”

Mr Wells said a location for the proposed school had already been earmarked at the former Bacardi plant. The Bahamas Gymnastics Centre is currently using 6,000-7,000 square feet out of a potential 30,000 square foot space, and the plan is for the school to occupy the remainder.

While several hundred thousand dollars will be required to properly outfit and refit the space, Mr Wells said the IT school would likely incur $1.5 million in operating costs per annum.

“Initially, we’re thinking of bringing in two senior professors from India, and the other will be local staff,” he told this newspaper. “We’re looking at starting with 100 students for an 11-month programme.”

By gradually building a trained Bahamian IT workforce, Mr Wells said he hoped to make inroads into the outsourcing that was done by many Bahamas-based companies.

“This work that is farmed out to India, Jamaica and Canada should be done right here,” he added. “We should be able to handle that here, but it’s not something that will happen overnight. There’s a lot of jobs in that.”

Hoping that between 50-80 students from the school would graduate with certification every year, Mr Wells noted that the banks and large Bahamas-based companies frequently outsourced their IT work or brought in foreign contractors.

“What we really need is a commitment from the Government and commercial community,” he told Tribune Business.

“That’s what happened in Jamaica, where the government sent certain people from each department to the school, sponsoring a student. The banks also sponsored students, sent their people there to train them.”

Mr Wells said he had spoken to both the Ministry of Education and Michael Halkitis, minister of state for finance, on the planned IT school.

“They’re interested in it. It’s up to us to move it forward,” he added.