The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

FIVE people have been made redundant at the Melia, according to Robert Sands, Baha Mar’s senior vice-president of government and external affairs.

Labour Minister Dion Foulkes said he had been notified of the firings in due time, as the Employment Act requires.

The redundancies come as the resort initiates digital transformations which affect the human resources make-up of its Reservations Department, he said.

Last month it was revealed the country’s unemployment rate stands at 10.1 percent, according to the Department of Statistics’ Labour Force survey results.

The total number of employed people has increased by 3,575, but this was not enough to balance out the number of new graduates entering the work force.

To address the unemployment problem, the Department of Labour has launched an initiative called “Labour on the Blocks”.

Last month, more than 400 Bain and Grants Town residents visited the Sarah Ingraham Park at Hospital and Cambridge Lanes which sought to register job seekers in the department’s data base. More than 1,000 people have been registered so far through the initiative, which Mr Foulkes says has resulted in 800 becoming gainfully employed.

In a statement, Mr Foulkes said the labour initiatives for the month of January “are a great jump start to actively engaging and connecting eligible job seekers with the appropriate job opportunities making for an easier process for job seekers and employers”. He added that the Department of Labour’s facilitation of these types of initiatives “will continue into the year as we hope the goal of decreasing levels of unemployment will be successfully achieved through these programmes”.

Meanwhile, Progressive Liberal Party Leader Philip “Brave” Davis complained yesterday that hundreds of people were forced to stand outside in the “hot sun” at a job fair in Freeport on Saturday that was sponsored by the government.

“Having fired in excess of 2500 hundred persons without seeking to find jobs for them, what hope is engendered by these job fairs sponsored by the government?” he asked. “If these exercises are to continue, at the very least we recommend a more humane approach in an appropriate venue other than outdoors on a playing field. The jobs fair in Freeport and the one planned for Nassau (later this) month seem to my colleagues and me a shameless public relations exercise to cover up for the FNM’s inability to create jobs. The exercise in Freeport was demeaning and degrading to our people.”