Worker Shortage, Not Bias, Says Vanterpool
Businessman and political leader Mark Vanterpool tells Morning Facts that employers prefer hiring locals but are struggling to find residents willing to fill available positions. He says cultural shifts toward office work and a shrinking pool of hospitality-ready workers help explain rising use of overseas labour, not employer bias.
Businessman and political leader Mark Vanterpool says a shortage of local applicants — not employer bias — is the main reason companies in the British Virgin Islands are hiring expatriate workers. Speaking on Cindy Rosan’s Morning Facts programme, Vanterpool responded to public complaints that businesses favour imported labour over Virgin Islanders.
He told listeners that employers would rather hire locally because it is cheaper and involves far less bureaucracy than recruiting overseas. “I used to tell the Labour Department that any local person you have who needs a job and wants to work, send them to me,” Vanterpool said. “If I apply for five persons to come in and Labour has five, send them to me, and I will hire them immediately.” He added that importing workers requires extra payments and a lengthy approval process, making local hires the simpler option.
Vanterpool said his recent hiring experience bears this out. He described recruitment for a new restaurant where only one local person applied, forcing management to consider poaching staff from other establishments to fill shifts. “The pool of local workers who want to work is not there as much as we say,” he said.
At the same time, Vanterpool acknowledged the Territory’s historic strength in hospitality. “There weren’t any better hospitality workers in the entire Virgin Islands than BVIslanders,” he said, recalling earlier eras when hotels in both the BVI and USVI preferred local staff. He attributed the current mismatch partly to decades of young people gravitating to financial-services office jobs, which have been seen as easier or more attractive than service roles.
With employment opportunities in financial services declining, Vanterpool urged a concerted effort to retrain and redirect young people into hospitality and service industries, warning that planned hotel and restaurant growth will need a reliable local workforce. Vanterpool’s remarks come amid growing public frustration over the number of work permits being approved, and amid complaints from some Virgin Islanders and long-term residents who say they remain unemployed or shut out of opportunities.
His comments underline a broader policy challenge for the Territory: balancing legitimate demand for foreign workers with initiatives to strengthen local hiring through training, apprenticeship and better employer–government coordination. Vanterpool proposed closer cooperation with the Labour Department and education providers to prepare people for service-sector jobs, and to change perceptions that service work is servitude.
How government, schools and the private sector respond will shape whether more BVI residents fill the jobs being created in tourism and hospitality.
Primary source: BVI News