By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday said he was behind a planned “tightening” of understudy programmes so that Bahamians are properly trained up to replace expatriate work permit holders.

Dion Foulkes, minister of labour, said outside the Cabinet Office that the Department of Labour has had the understudy/apprenticeship initiative in place for “about three to four years.”

He added: “I established a working committee of the Department of Labour to tighten the whole question of apprenticeship; to ensure that Bahamians who are trained by persons who have work permits within a reasonable time [are able] to assume those jobs when the work permits expire.

“We are trying to tighten that process, but we are doing it in conjunction with the trade union movement and also the business community. That, too, also has been placed before the National Tripartite Council.”

Peter Goudie, who sits as the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) representative on the Tripartite Council, said: “Well, John (Pinder, director of labour) is on the National Tripartite Council and that programme is a part of our mandate, and so we will be talking about it a lot.

“But I’m not so sure that the apprenticeship programme was necessarily made to replace foreigners. I guess that’s possible, but that wasn’t the point of the apprenticeship programme to replace foreign workers. Not that I’m aware of.

“It was just to give people skills so they can get jobs, right? I don’t know if there was a mandate to replace foreign workers, even though that may be possible. But I can discuss it further with Robert Farquharson (council chairman). I’d like to verify that first.”

Mr Pinder last year said employers requesting work permits will have to provide the Department of Labour with named understudies to expatriate workers and their training programmes to ensure Bahamians can replace them.

“We will now make it mandatory for the employer who is applying for a labour certificate to have understudies named,” Mr Pinder said. “We are going to start that process effective January to start asking the employer to provide us the understudy programme, so that we can monitor it to ensure that the understudy gains the necessary training to fill the position of the person on the work permit.”

Mr Pinder’s comments elicited a sharp response from former minister for immigration, Branville McCartney, who said that the Department of Labour’s plan will be too costly and was “good in theory but bad in practice”. He also insisted that the policy, if implemented, should be looked at on a “case-by-case basis” rather than a blanket approach across the board.