British Virgin Islands

I understand that we are going to have another labor review board to revisit the labor act. Yes, this was just done a few years ago. Some of the ideas that are being bantered around are:
1) two week turnarounds for new permits!!!! 7 days for renewals and temporaries.
2) Long time work permit holders not being automatically renewed, instead the jobs being advertised for any qualified BVI Landers.
3) Doubling the staff and space at least in Labor and Immigration
4) Making new work permit holders attend a class so they know their rights and privileges in the country.
5) A revisitation of the lack of advance notice of new conditions that show up or disappear every year.
6) A look into the practice of many companies outsourcing their work permits as the Labor Board is hard to deal with.
7) Having help for the employer filling out the forms (although i have to admit that the two ladies who sit at the reception desk are usually quite helpful!)
Hiring a PR officer for Labor (yep, it could use that)

The most surprising thing I found out from this is how many work permit exemptions that have been given out! There has been a moratorium on them this year, but in several months prior, 700 were given!! Given out to people who have only been on work permit in the territory for a year or two. This is puzzling as many of us have been over a decade or two in the territory. Apparently they now have to be approved by cabinet instead of just the Labor Minister. I don't have enough information to say more that this now. We shall see what happens. We go through this every few years, and quite frankly, over the last decade, it may get easier for well connected, but we have found that it just gets harder and harder to jump through the hoops that we need to to hire people in the territory and it is downright discouraging at times.