That Minister of Public Health, Social Affairs and Labour VSA Pamela Gordon-Carty wants to promote employment among locals (see Tuesday paper) is in principle positive. However, declining work permit requests for jobs she is sure can be filled by locals does raise some concerns.
There is already a process in place whereby the employer in question must advertise the position, wait a specific period and consider any qualified candidates referred by the Labour Office. If none show up, withholding permits or their extensions for expatriates could not only harm individual entities but ultimately society in general.
The VSA minister mentioned carpenters, teachers and nurses, but how “certain” can she be really there are sufficient suitable alternatives with Dutch citizenship or permanent residency? Anyone who visits the many building sites in St. Maarten will hear mostly foreign languages being spoken, simply because construction workers, including carpenters, have understandably been in short supply since the passage of Hurricane Irma.
At the same time, unemployed persons are also being urged to register. This is obviously an issue that needs to resolved first, before making it even harder to do business on the island.
Asking the Labour Office to “revisit” such applications would seem to imply they did not do enough in those cases to make sure no locals were available. However, one assumes there are existing standard requirements, norms and procedures to prevent the kind of favouritism that occurred in the past.
Gordon-Carty’s argument “as much as we are in need of investors, we must ensure that the local market is secured” makes sense, but it cannot be so either that policies or their execution are changed at the whim of every minister and entrepreneurs no longer know where they stand. There must be crystal-clear and unambiguous rules, regulations and guidelines.
