Minister Pamela Gordon-Carty
PHILIPSBURG--Minister of Health, Labour and Social Affairs VSA Pamela Gordon-Carty said she has begun taking steps to secure jobs for locals by declining work permit requests for jobs that she is certain can be filled by locals.
The declined requests concern applications for carpenters, teachers and nurses, the ministry said in a press release on Monday.
“I urge the Labour Office to revisit such applications and to advertise such vacancies to allow qualified local candidates to apply for the positions,” Gordon-Carty said. “In the event no applications are received from qualified local applicants, then the position may be offered to overseas applicants.”
The Minister is urging unemployed locals to register at the Labour Office to allow them to be considered when work opportunities surface.
The Minister said, “As much as we are in need of investors, we must ensure that the local market is secured and that the rights of the locals are safeguarded, like many other countries do. It makes no sense to sign off on work-permit requests from overseas applicants while we have a great number of skilled locals unemployed. I do not intend to sign off on any such permits until the local unemployment is significantly reduced.”
She said that if we continue to give out our work to people from abroad, we will be contributing towards impoverishing our country and its people, and minimising opportunities for our children in their land, an act she has no intensions of being part of.
