The Tribune

PLP chairman Fred Mitchell has called on the Minnis administration to be clear about the country’s unemployment rate after what he termed contradictions from Labour Director John Pinder and Labour Minister Dion Foulkes on the issue.

Mr Pinder recently estimated the unemployment rate is around 40 percent, however last week Mr Foulkes told reporters it is difficult to accurately state the country’s current unemployment rate, but said the figure has come down “drastically” since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I refer to a statement attributed to the director of labour, John Pinder, that appeared in a headline story in one of the local newspapers,” Mr Mitchell said. “In it, Mr Pinder estimated the unemployment rate to be around 40 percent. This statement contradicts the labour minister’s assertion to the media a week earlier that unemployment was way down as most people were back to work.

“This is not the first time the labour director was at odds with his minister on government policy matters. Bahamians recall that recently the labour director told the media that employers should pay their employees redundancy packages due to them, but the labour minister said employees should not be paid.

“The government must come clean on and be clear about what their policies are and the facts on the unemployment rate.”

Mr Mitchell said the “confusion is further exacerbated” by yesterday’s announcement from hotel officials that the Melia Nassau Beach Resort is suspending operations for 24 months, putting hundreds of employees out of work.

The government’s emergency orders suspend Employment Act provisions, which mandate that companies must pay full severance to workers who have been sent home for 90 days, until a month after these powers expire. The latest extension thus takes the suspension through to June 23, 2021.

“With thousands more furloughed, this means that no hotel employee is eligible to receive their redundancy payment until at least the first week of July, barring another extension by the government,” Mr Mitchell said. “In the meantime, the National Insurance fund is challenged and the suffering among thousands of Bahamians continues.

“We call on the government again to bring this state of public emergency to an end so that thousands of Bahamians can receive some economic relief,” he said.

Last week, Mr Foulkes said the job market is better than it was in the early stages of the pandemic.

“The workforce in The Bahamas is approximately 220,000 workers,” Mr Foulkes said. “The last unemployment assistance number was around 28,000 or 30,000 – the unemployment assistance programme that National Insurance does in terms of the assistance the government is giving, it’s around 28,000 or 30,000 persons.

“Now if you figure that in terms of percentage it will come down to a low percentage compared to 220,000 workers but that is not the right way to do it because you have structural unemployment and there are a lot of other things that go into calculating what the unemployment rate is.

“But since the pandemic started, I am confident based on the evidence that we see in the economy that the unemployment rate has drastically come down because as you know everything was at a standstill and most of the businesses, they put their workers on temporary layoffs.

“That has now changed. Most of the people are coming back to work so it’s very difficult to peg a percentage upon that,” Mr Foulkes said last week.