There are those who, like the chartered accountant quoted recently in The Tribune, believe that work permits should be abolished. “I don’t believe,” said the chartered accountant, “that they are necessary. I don’t think you should worry about work permits as much as you do.”
Instead, he said, Bahamians should ensure that they are better than foreign workers – that they have more education and greater skills.
On the other hand, there are those, like Sir Arthur Foulkes, who believe that while the Immigration Department is necessary, it should not use its powers to hamper any organisation that requires a work permit. When an applicant satisfies all of the Board’s requirements, the granting of a permit should be automatic.
As we have already pointed out in this column, Bahamianisation was introduced by the UBP. This party, unlike governments that followed, was composed of businessmen and so they understood the needs of business. They also understood the importance of prompt replies to business applications. However, they also wanted to ensure that if a Bahamian qualified for a position, he got preference over an outsider.
Hence their Bahamianisation programme – a programme crafted to assist, not to hinder, Bahamians.
As Sir Arthur says, Immigration’s requirements for obtaining a work permit should be clear. If all the requirements are met, then the permit should be issued.
Today, Minister Shane Gibson’s admitted lack of knowledge of the rules, has further muddied already murky waters. The Minister has admitted that many of the department’s directives cannot be found in any written manual. Therefore, how are members of the public to know what is expected of them?
For example, last week we were surprised to learn that the renewal of Managing Editor John Marquis’ work permit would be reconsidered if we sent in certain information. What surprised us was that we were being asked in August for information that had already been submitted to Mr Gibson’s Ministry in January of this year.
As far as we understand the procedure, if a position is vacant, an advertisement is published in three consecutive editions of a newspaper, stating the vacancy, the skills required to fill it, and where interested persons should send their applications. At the same time a form – A Notification of Vacancy – is obtained from the Labour Department, which asks a series of questions, one of them being the number of Bahamians in training for the position, their names, the date their training started, and the duration of the training. And so this question, for which, in the case of Mr Marquis, the Immigration Board is again asking, had to be answered at the very beginning of the process.
When the Labour form is filled out, the newspaper advertisement is attached with $25 as a processing fee and submitted to the Labour Department. The object of this application is to discover if the Labour Department has anyone on its register who can be recommended to the applicant as a possible candidate for the position.
Still using Mr Marquis as an example, we have never had anyone apply to any of our advertisements for his position, and Labour has always returned our form with the stock reply:
“Please be advised that there are no Bahamians for this position at this time. Please be further advised that should a Bahamian register as unemployed within a reasonable time after this certificate has been issued, he or she may be referred to you.” The certificate is then officially signed, stamped and dated.
What is of interest is that in the past such forms could be collected from the Labour Department within a week. Since Mr Gibson’s advent, they can take anywhere from six to eight weeks, depending on which staff member one deals with, although we have been assured that notices on the walls of the Labour Department say that replies to these forms should take no more than four weeks. So even in this small detail there is confusion.
When all of this information is collated – three issues of the newspaper with the relevant advertisement, the Labour certificate, health and police certificates and photographs with another $25 for processing – the application is submitted to the Immigration Board. The applicant then waits for a reply.
As far as the applicant is concerned everything required has been done. With no replies to the advertisements, with the Labour Department unable to even suggest a name to fill the position – ﾠand with the applicant satisfying the requirement of having staff in training – what more could be expected to prove that to carry on business the foreigner applied for was essential? This is where, once all the requirements have been satisfied, the granting of a permit should be automatic. But it is not.
Therefore, it can only be concluded that Bahamianisation is being used, not just to protect positions for Bahamians – especially if they don’t exist for positions being advertised – but also to frustrate the smooth operation of a private organisation – in this case The Tribune.
If that is what Bahamianisation is all about, ﾠit should be abolished immediately. However, if it is to sincerely protect job opportunities for qualified Bahamians, then it should be properly administered.
This was the very issue dealt with on August 15 on “Issues of the Day”, a Love97 radio programme. On that talk show Mr Paul Cumberbatch, described as a small farmer, complained that government’s bureaucracy was “frustrating farmers in the Bahamas.”
We (The Tribune) shall deal with these complaints in this column tomorrow.
Editorial from The Tribune
