Providenciales, 20 Feb 2015 – One day after being put on blast by former Premier Michael Misick and the TCI sees a warning from the current Premier to employers in the country to hire his people and pay his people. The statement is already being criticized as baseless and the country’s leader: playing politics. Premier Rufus Ewing in a press release yesterday talks about the boom in the economy thanks to the tourism and hospitality industry surging by 24% and then gets on the case of companies in that sector saying he is not satisfied, for example, that the level of growth is being felt in local businesses.
Another point for the Premier, I quote him here: “…ensure that Turks and Caicos Islanders employed within your establishments receive fair opportunities for promotions and fair compensation, comparative to that which any foreign worker would have otherwise received had they been employed in those positions.” He said on the one hand there are companies hiring and fairly compensating natives, but to those which are not, the Premier leveled this warning: “This practice of overlooking my people stops here and it will no longer be business as usual. Moving forward, I will expect your efforts to employ, train, retain, promote and pay Turks and Caicos Islanders to be genuine, earnest, strategic and meaningful, and this expectation applies to all businesses, public, private and statutory.”
The leader in the PNP Administration in that statement also claims that the unemployment rate has been reduced since they took office. The comments from Hon Rufus Ewing come one day after former Premier Michael Misick blasted the current PNP for veering off of the PNP Manifesto promises and losing touch with the people, and just hours before Cabinet revealed that a minimum wage increase starts on April 1, 2015. Magnetic Media asked the Office of the Premier to provide statistics on the unemployment rate in 2012 vs 2015, to provide the figure on how many jobs have been created in the private sector and to provide the number of jobs created in the public sector. Up to news time, that information was not yet issued.
