Stop hiring expats over BVI boat captains

Hodge-Smith. Junior Minister for Tourism and Culture Luce Hodge-Smith has strongly advocated for local boat captains who say they are being overlooked for work while charter companies favour expatriate captains. Hodge-Smith raised the issue at a recent marine industry forum where stakeholders discussed some of the barriers preventing Virgin Islanders from securing and sustaining employment in the territory’s lucrative marine sector. “We get a lot of complaints about the charter yacht companies overlooking them, and bringing in captains from different parts of the world, and giving them more jobs than they would get,” Hodge-Smith said. She explained that local captains have complained that when dozens of charters are available, visiting or expatriate captains are sometimes given the majority of the jobs.

Adding to the frustration, Hodge-Smith said local captains are sometimes expected to train newcomers who end up taking opportunities from them. “And then they’re also asked to train these persons that are coming in, because they don’t know the waters like our local captains do and they won’t be able to give the guests an experience because they don’t know. They don’t know the anchorages, the different sites, they don’t know the different ambiences of our different cays,” Hodge-Smith argued. She also highlighted concerns that overseas captains travel to the BVI for work when the sailing season in their home jurisdictions slows, putting them in direct competition with locals during the territory’s peak season. While stressing that the complaints need to be investigated, she said authorities and charter companies cannot ignore what local captains are saying. “Our local captains are crying out. They are crying out because they’re being ostracised in certain cases,”…