Ms. Elma Campbell, Senator and Minister of State for Immigration was the keynote speaker at a luncheon for the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, October 25, 2007 and while her speech is not yet available online I'd like to give my summary:
Members of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and other interested parties, we will continue to work diligently to meet the needs of the business community and our policies will reflect priority needs of the Bahamian people and economy.
We are committed to approve work permits for foreigners but we must micromanage your business and you must send written requests and have a Bahamian apprentice because we expect the business community to train Bahamians.
And if you are a good corporate citizen you will have programmes in our failing schools to identify those students that can come to work for you.
This is an attempt at humour of course, but she said a lot of it, albeit a bit more diplomatically.
It's clear, the lack of available talent in The Bahamas is forcing more and more business people to look at importing workers and this is substantiated by the fact that some 500 work permit applications are received each week I believe she said.
One very interesting point she made is that Immigration grosses some $29 million for the Public Treasury. No small sum.
One glaring omission in my not so humble opinion are the every day concerns that customers have while trying to do business with the Immigration Department.
During the question and answer period I asked if she had seen the excellent recommendations put forward by the Financial Services Consultative Forum Immigration Sub-Committee. Regretfully she had not been provided a copy by the former administration nor the officials at the Immigration Department. A sorrowful reflection of how serious we are about fixing the real problems faced by The Bahamas.
Click here for Part 1 of the report and click here for Part 2.
I gave the Minister a copy I had printed off so hopefully some of the sensible recommendations put forward by those private sector individuals will be implemented.
Image of The Islands of The Bahamas found at The Bahamas Government Web Site.
