Dear Editor,
Buddy’s hotel had made a statement that they would be recruiting about 20 staff from India and China among the 300 locals to do certain jobs in which locals weren’t available. These, for example, include the running of a Chinese restaurant.
The THAG executive director who knows her trade, recently pointed out in SN of 16/2/07 that non-nationals hold key hotel-sector jobs in the tourist countries of the Caribbean. What people who invest money in businesses are interested in is to make their investments and enterprises pay.
They are interested in successful and efficient performance, not the nationality of the providers of such performance. It would be courting disaster in the hotel industry to employ locals simply because they are locals though their performance would be below standard. Buddy’s Hotel, like all businesses with a serious financial stake in the hotel and tourist industry, can’t afford to make mistakes.
Mr Eric Phillips of ACDA and his African Business Council were bitter in his criticism of Buddy’s for saying they would use even a small number of qualified and efficient Indians and Chinese to do special jobs, though he didn’t say anything of other Caribbean territories whose hotels employ non-nationals in chief positions, or the Pegasus.
If Mr Phillips is intent on doing the very praiseworthy job of forming an African Business Council to stimulate enterprise and money-making among Africans, he must convince himself of the absolute necessity of meritocracy and profits in business enterprises. Pure economics must be the paramount consideration.
Yours faithfully,
P I Peters