The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Private sector representatives should sit on the Immigration and Labour Boards, a well-known businessman suggested yesterday, warning that many companies were beginning to “resent” being forced to hire understudies as a condition of work permit approvals.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, a prominent critic of the Government’s proposed ‘hard line’ work permit policy, called on the Christie administration to “embrace” the Bahamian private sector and work with it, rather than offer harsh rhetoric that was harming the economy.

Pointing out that the private sector’s desire to expand dovetailed nicely with the Government’s political objective of creating much-needed Bahamian jobs, the Superwash president told Tribune Business that “no one” knew better than a businessman whether a company required expatriate labour.

“Businesses should be integrated into this process,” Mr D’Aguilar said. “Who knows better than a businessman if a business needs to hire a foreign expatriate?

“What does a bureaucrat know about who a businessman should hire in his own business? Put us on the Immigration and Labour Boards, include the Chamber of Commerce. Embrace them, rather than this: ‘We’ll shut it down’.”

The Immigration Board currently consists of ministers, plus Immigration and Labour Department officials. There is no private sector input into the decision over whether work permits are approved or not, something that could be a hindrance to the process.

Fred Mitchell, minister of immigration, last week conceded to a Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) that some might argue the fact he had not run a business was ‘part of the problem’ in relation to the seeming disconnect between the Government and the private sector over the work permit issue.

Mr D’Aguilar, meanwhile, drew on previously published data that indicated the recent work permit controversy was akin to making ‘a mountain out of a mole hill’.

The November 2012 Labour Force Survey disclosed that the Bahamas’ workforce was 192,205 persons strong, a figure that dwarfed the 7,091 work permits approved by the Immigration Department in 2011.

Using those figures, just 3.7 per cent of the Bahamian labour force was made up of expatriate work permit holders whose documents were approved in 2011. “The total number of work permits is less than 5 per cent [of the labour force],” Mr D’Aguilar added.

Brent Symonette, Mr Mitchell’s predecessor as Immigration Minister, told Parliament in February 2012 that the former Ingraham administration had adopted a similar approach to that now being touted by the Christie government, disclosing then that work permit renewals had decreased by 24 per cent year-over-year - from 9,390 in 2010 to 7,091.

Echoing Mr Mitchell’s current line, Mr Symonette said then: “We are putting Bahamians first. We are not issuing permits to foreigners for jobs Bahamians can do.”

And, just as revealing, the then-Deputy Prime Minister disclosed that 3,793 of the 2011 approved work permits - some 53 per cent of the total - were for housekeepers and handymen because Bahamians “don’t want to do the job”.

Mr D’Aguilar also told Tribune Business that the Government was walking a “fine line” on unreasonable interference in a private business’s hiring practices by insisting that ‘understudies’ be recruited to shadow all work permit holders, with a view to eventually taking over from them.

“There are a lot of Bahamian businesses resenting this whole understudy requirement,” he said. “Businesses believe the Government [education system] should produce enough labour with sufficient skills to fill most positions in most companies.

“There’s definitely a skills gap, and the cost of getting an understudy is going to be significant. If you have to get an expatriate in, pay for the work permit and pay someone to understudy them, at that point it doesn’t become economically feasible. You might as well shut it down and go home.”

Urging the Government not to “smother” Bahamian businesses with the ‘understudy’ requirement, Mr D’Aguilar said the process of graduating Bahamian replacements into posts held by expatriates was fraught with challenges.

“It’s not as easy as they [the Government] think it is,” he told Tribune Business. “If you hire the understudy, they may not be the right persons, and after one year you may decide they’re not up to it.

“What do you do now? You’ve hired them and it doesn’t work out. Do you go back, cap in hand, to Immigration asking for another two years, and they think you are cheating the system?”

Other potential pitfalls occur, Mr D’Aguilar added, if the Bahamian ‘understudy’ takes over only to leave for another job, with no suitably qualified Bahamians able to take over from them.

Tribune Business, too, knows of a prominent insurance business that hired two Bahamian ‘understudies’ for posts held by expatriates on five-year work permits. In the third year, the two Bahamians left to start their own business, leaving the insurance company back at ‘square one’.

Calling for the Government and Bahamian private sector to work together on Immigration/work permit policy, rather than fight as they are doing now, Mr D’Aguilar said businesses should be viewed as “the engine of the economy”.

“How do you create job? Expand business. If you hire a foreigner and create eight local jobs, it’s a win-win,” he told Tribune Business.

“While they may not be anti-business, the current rhetoric is. They have to be careful they don’t turn off local business people from expanding their businesses.

“People expand their businesses because they feel good. If they feel a foreigner in their business will help them to expand, and they feel that will not happen, they will probably not expand their business.

“Bahamian businesses are very much sitting on the sidelines right now, and that’s reflected by the fact there’s huge amounts of deposits in the bank. Banks are not lending, businesses are not borrowing, and if you add to that the sentiment if can be hard to find qualified labour, you may end up causing the economic growth rate to be lower than it should.”