The Tribune

EARLY yesterday morning, we received a telephone call from a member of the public who has close friends in both political camps – PLP and FNM. He was concerned. In fact he was very concerned.

“The PLP are determined to destroy The Tribune through Labour and Immigration,” he confided. He obviously had been in conversation with some of his pals, who explained the object of the exercise.

He might be correct as far as he has gone about The Tribune, but in fact it is far worse than that. It is government’s unreasonable and unenlightened immigration policy that will eventually destroy this country – a country that continues to graduate D average students. This is not to condemn all Bahamians into the “D” average basket. We are well aware that there are brilliant Bahamians amongst us — the tragedy is that there are not enough of them in every profession for the Bahamas to grow and prosper as it could and should.

The greatest problem is that this country has too many unenlightened leaders — leaders, many of whom would themselves be unable to qualify for certain professions, and yet they are to be our judges.

“Based on an employee’s qualifications, we are of the opinion that those with bachelor’s and master’s degrees shouldn’t take long to be trained for a position. In some cases, we have been told that the training process could take up to three years. We think that’s unreasonable. So even the time frame for the training programme has been reduced,” said Labour Director Robert Farquharson.

This is one of the most unenlightened statements that we have heard. One shoe does not fit all. For example, the training to manage a store should not take as long as that needed to manage and develop a news media company, which embraces all the modern branches of the media, including print, web and digital.

For example, when we first returned to The Tribune with three degrees – philosophy, law and journalism from three prestigious universities – it would have taken us more than a year to master the intricacies of the job now being done by an editor whose permit we hope to renew.

The fact of the matter is that because of the hours and labour intensive grind of this particular position we have never found a Bahamian who has been attracted to it. In addition to which one has to have mastered many branches of the profession — not just writing — to even qualify to understudy for this position. And to fully grasp it in a year is impossible. The problem is that no one understands what it takes to be a journalist. Anyone who can spell and put pen to paper is not necessarily journalism material.

We can say that the PLP from the beginning has been the greatest stumbling block to the training of Bahamians at The Tribune.

We remember discussing this matter with the late Sir Lynden Pindling, first prime minister. He told us that anyone with a degree could write. If only he knew how wrong he was.

We told him of the case of the late Rev John Taylor, a clever and brilliant playwright. He certainly had a flair with the pen. The late Sir Etienne Dupuch, publisher of this newspaper, had great hopes for him.

According to Sir Etienne, John was just the man he was looking for to train as an editor. It wasn’t that he couldn’t write. It wasn’t that he was not sufficiently well educated. It was just that the life of a journalist was not for him — too disciplined with hours that were too long. He soon left and joined the civil service and later the Anglican priesthood.

We knew that we had to train Bahamians, but with no one but ourselves to train them — in addition to publishing a daily newspaper — we decided on an exchange programme. Darrell Rolle was then the PLP’s Minister of Immigration. We sat down with him to explain our plans. He was most enthusiastic until he realised that what an exchange programme meant was that while we would send one of our staff to England to be trained on a newspaper, one of that newspaper’s staff would come here to fill the vacant position while our reporter was in training. It was a wonderful plan, Mr Rolle thought.

However, said Mr Rolle, the PLP government would never give The Tribune permission to bring a foreigner in to write about them – no matter how short the period. And, as we could not manage with an empty chair, no matter how inexperienced the person occupying it, the idea died aborning.

And so we soldiered on with inexperienced staff, having to rewrite almost every piece of copy that crossed our desk. It was a miracle that we ever published a daily newspaper in those days.

It was then decided to start our own journalism school. A wing of our building was dedicated to the school, where journalism — all branches – was to be taught by an English journalist, well versed in the profession.

The late Eugene Dupuch, QC, after whom the Eugene Dupuch law school was named, lectured on defamation and other professionals were invited to give talks. The students were taken to the courts, the parliament, and all public places from which they would have to report during the course of their career. They were taught T-line shorthand, and other journalistic skills.

On Saturdays — when The Tribune printed an evening newspaper, before we went morning — the students came into the newsroom to do their field work. Eventually, they were up to producing their own tabloid newspaper, which was inserted into The Tribune.

One would have thought that the young people would have had to pay for this training. Not at all, they were all paid a small stipend by The Tribune with the understanding that we would take the three top members of the class onto The Tribune’s staff. The others were trained to go wherever there might be an opening for their expertise.

As a matter of fact, someone at ZNS told an applicant who had applied for a job there, that their application would not be considered unless they had gone through The Tribune’s programme.

We were very proud of the results. However, at the end of the first year when we applied for the renewal of the Instructor’s work permit, the application was refused. The school was closed.

We would not today have such a shortage of qualified journalists in our profession if this school had continued and been encouraged to grow. The College of the Bahamas has not been able to match what was given here in that one year.

And then we look at Singapore, where the foreign worker is not only welcomed by the government, but encouraged to enter. Singapore has various categories of immigrants— foreign workers and foreign talents. Many Bahamian businesses today would come under the importation of foreign talents — this is the category that would qualify The Tribune. In the 2013 Population White Paper, the Singapore parliament claimed that foreign workers helped businesses thrive, especially when the economy is good.

In an article speculating as to whether Singapore is “the next Silicon Valley”, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is quoted as saying that his island state “aims to create an open, vibrant economy and promote a spirit of inquiry – vital ingredients for the success of its growing interactive and digital media industry”.

At the opening of the establishment of the Lucasfilm’s regional headquarters in Singapore last year, Mr Lee rejoiced in his country’s ability to attract overseas talent and develop new sectors like digital animation. “This will, in turn, create exciting new opportunities for Singaporeans,” said Mr Lee.

And Mr Tan, the Acting Manpower Minister, said “it won’t be easy, but Singapore companies will have to change the way they do business, whether through automation or job redesign”.

“It’s important,” he said, “for Singapore to still remain open to have foreign labour here.

“Foreigners, in a sense, are competing with us. That’s globalisation, it’s not something we can wish away because it’s happening and it’s affecting every country in the world. And we’re no different,” said Mr Tan.

But overall, Mr Tan said, the presence of foreigners remains positive – in creating opportunities for Singaporeans.

“If we swing too far the other way,” he said, “you can run the risk that if you become too closed, too tight, inflexible, companies might find that they are better off just operating somewhere else.”

Today, even Bahamians are considering that option.

The Bahamas government acknowledges that for development and job creation our economy needs foreign investors. However, with its present myopic and anti-foreign attitude, investors will look the other way.