The election of a stable government in Haiti tomorrow could clear the way for the Bahamas government to explore the establishment of a structured labour accord with that nation, according to Minister of Labour and Immigration Vincent Peet.
But Minister Peet stressed in an interview with The Bahama Journal that this would only happen if the government decides outside labour is needed to support a growing economy.
“If there’s a government in place we could then sit down and negotiate a form to get [Haitians] in the country legally as the demand increases for their services, but through a structure that would cause there to be more predictability and we can plan how we develop the country should there be a need for their labour,” he said.
The recruitment of Haitians to provide labour in The Bahamas is something Haitian Ambassador to The Bahamas Louis Harold Joseph also supports.
“In our discussion in the future, probably we would come to that,” Mr. Joseph told The Bahama Journal.
“I’m not condoning illegal immigration here, but I think here in The Bahamas, you need some foreigners, you need some legal people coming here to assist because you have an emerging economy and just by reading the newspapers here, you see that there are a lot of investments here-I’m sure that you need people. You don’t need illegal people, but you need people to assist.”
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) only recently proposed that The Bahamas and other countries in the region sign labour migration accords with Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Haitians – both legal and illegally – have for decades been helping to support the Bahamian economy.
And thousands continue to head here for a better way of life.
“The Bahamas is doing very well,” Mr. Joseph noted. “[It] is an emerging economy.
You come immediately after the United States and Canada and probably Barbados. That’s why The Bahamas is attracting all the people, like Haitians, Cubans and Jamaicans. In Haiti, we know that the per capita income is $300, which means less than $1 per day.”
He noted elections would be crucial to his country’s progress.
Mr. Joseph added that the political instability that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster in 2004 did little to move Haiti forward.
Bahamas Ambassador to The Bahamas Dr. Eugene Newry also believes that a labour accord with Haiti would be a win-win situation.
“Don’t leave the economics out of it because such an arrangement is about more than just improving the structure of the immigration framework. This could also improve the economic structure,” he recently told The Bahama Journal.
“For example, under the old ‘contract’ arrangement between The Bahamas and the United States back in the 1940s and early 1950s the workers’ salaries were actually controlled by the Government of The Bahamas.”
Outlining other details of how labour migration accords could be mutually beneficial, Dr. Newry said a more structured approach to engaging Haitian labour could help to satisfy this country’s demand for labour and also help with the development of Haiti, the Caribbean’s most impoverished nation.
“With the ‘contract’ that operated back then the salaries of these people were divided into three,” he said.
“One third went to the workers for their actual cost of living, a third sent back to the family back in The Bahamas and the rest was actually invested in The Bahamas by the Government of The Bahamas. Basically we could do the same thing and I am absolutely convinced that the authorities in Haiti would approve that.”
By: Candia Dames, The Bahama Journal
