The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Grand Bahama’s Chamber of Commerce president says this nation must shed its protectionist Immigration mentality if the economy and major foreign direct investment (FDI) projects are to flourish, as he warned: “The reality is we are penny wise and pound foolish.”

Dillon Knowles, telling Tribune Business that the private sector advocacy group is “extremely concerned” about Grand Bahama Shipyard turning away “thousands of hours of work” because it cannot obtain sufficient work permits in a timely manner to facilitate entry of the highly-skilled, certified workers it requires, said The Bahamas too often focuses on protecting the jobs it has as opposed to growing employment with a targeted Immigration policy that attracts top minds and companies.

He compared the situation to a pizza, arguing that The Bahamas is choosing to protect the existing “five slices” rather than growing the size of the pie to 20-30 slices for the benefit of all. Mr Knowles explained that such growth will not just benefit expatriate investors and the businesses they establish, as their arrival will create extra economic activity and jobs, skills improvements/transfer, and incomes that boost Bahamian wealth and prosperity.

Responding to both the opportunities and challenges set out by Chris Earl, the Grand Bahama Shipyard’s chief executive, in his Grand Bahama Business Outlook speech last Thursday, Mr Knowles told this newspaper that The Bahamas needs to “rethink” its approach to sourcing and attracting FDI by ensuring it provides such projects with the necessary human and other resources they need to succeed. And, if all such resources are not present in The Bahamas, then the country needs to facilitate their entrance.

“That’s a good portion of the challenge,” the GB Chamber chief said of the Shipyard’s work permit woes. “As Chris Earl said in his presentation yesterday, he defined it as this ecosystem that supports the Shipyard. It’s not just having enough of their staff, but having enough collaboration and support systems to tap into for them to be successful.

“The reality of it is we are penny wise and pound foolish. We ask for these things, and when they show up we don’t facilitate them by ensuring we will deliver the resources they need to tap into or we allow the resources to come in which they need to tap into. That’s a huge problem.

“Generally, we have a society mentality where we believe we need to protect the five slices of pizza we have rather than grow the slices to 20-30. That’s a challenge. That’s clearly going to be a challenge for us until we as a people accept we’re too small to be a big player unless we bring in more people to help.”

Mr Earl, in his Grand Bahama Business Outlook address, warned that the near-quadrupling of Grand Bahama Shipyard’s annual economic impact to $225m over the next five years is being threatened by a combination of work permit delays, sky-high air fares and accommodation shortages.

He added that he is “facing some very real challenges” just months into the Shipyard’s $665m “transformation”, with January’s “peak demand” having “exposed fragility with labour, logistics and services” even before the world’s largest floating dry dock, the Lucayan, arrives on the island in May.

With the Shipyard now carrying $650m in debt on its balance sheet as a result of its dual dry dock investment, he said that these weaknesses are undermining the “cost effective” position it must achieve to service this liability, having also “turned away thousands of hours of work” over the last six months due to the shortage of qualified manpower.

These shortages, Mr Earl added, have forced the Shipyard’s existing skilled workforce to work 60-70 hour weeks to meet the repair demands of cruise ship and other commercial vessel owners. And, due to the lack of supervising mentors, he said the Shipyard has been left with no choice but to reduce the number of Bahamian apprentices it has taken on this year.

This, the Shipyard chief added, has meant “young jobs lost” while “Bahamians have missed out on world-class training”. He also warned that The Bahamas is “getting a bad reputation” over delays and other issues related to the processing and approval of work permits, with expatriate skilled technicians either resigning or not wanting to come to Grand Bahama.

Mr Knowles told Tribune Business that the GB Chamber and, by extension, other businesses and the wider Freeport community are “extremely concerned” by the Shipyard’s challenges that threaten to undermine maximising the economic benefits from its $665m dual dry dock investment. “We’ve been talking about this for months,” he added.

“The Shipyard is about to take its physical assets on, and has to be paying for them now, but doesn’t have the human resources it needs to be able to take on the jobs that are going to allow it to generate the revenue to pay for those assets it has already acquired. That’s a serious concern for us here in Grand Bahama. That means, as a country, we really need to rethink how we support these projects when we speak to them and ask them to come.”

The Shipyard has to constantly rotate hundreds of skilled expatriate workers in and out of Grand Bahama according to ship repair schedules and the nature of the work demanded, but Mr Earl reiterated this is also being impeded by long-standing hotel room and other accommodation shortages plus skyrocketing air fares for direct travel between the island and US.

He said “a plane ticket to get off the island” cost $3,300 as of Wednesday - just as Royal Caribbean was sending all its contractors home from Grand Bahama after the Radiance of the Seas refit was completed. The Shipyard chief also warned that “a customer cannot book” sufficient hotel rooms on the island for a project it wishes to undertake in April and May 2026.

Mr Knowles said the key to solving these challenges involves increasing Grand Bahama’s room inventory, be it hotel rooms, short-term vacation rentals or long-term rentals, while also expanding airlift so that higher passenger loads enable airlines to lower ticket prices by spreading costs over more people.

“We need to get the hotel [Grand Lucayan] sold and built,” the GB Chamber chief said. “We need to work on getting more Airbnb product on the market. We need to ensure we are putting the necessary funding or access to funding in so the Bahamian people engage in these kinds of activities and take advantage of it and not depend on FDI. This is the kind of thing the Government needs to be working on. How do we engage the Bahamian people in a way that empowers them to be able to take on these kind of opportunities?”

Not everyone, though, was convinced by Mr Earl’s arguments. Maybell Bridgewater, president of the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) Workers Union, which represents Shipyard staff, argued that he seemed to have his “mind made up” and was overlooking Bahamian workers instead of expatriates. “My view is that if he sits down with the Bahamian people and doesn’t criticise we’d be in a better place,” she said.

“We’ve tried to have a conversation with him at the Labour Board and Immigration. Our position is: Send the vacancies to us, give us an opportunity for ten days to find people. We’ve been working hand in hand with the Shipyard, but his mind is already made up as to what he wants.”