The Minister of Economy and Labour has vowed that work permit applications will be processed in less than three weeks
Addressing the House of Assembly on March 6, Bermuda’s Minister of Labour Jason Hayward stated that he recognised the importance of issuing work permits to foreign nationals on a timely basis. He pledged to speed up the process which currently takes on average between two and three months to complete to as little as 20 days.
The minister acknowledged that an efficient system is crucial to ensure businesses can operate efficiently and is also a key component in attracting foreign business and investment. Mr Hayward advised the House of Assembly that a backlog of passport applications had recently been cleared after some applicants had had to wait for more than five months for renewals.
He assured the members that the Department of Immigration has now allocated the resources necessary to ensure efficient systems and reviewed processes to ensure that passports and other applications are processed promptly, but he acknowledged that they were still hampered by a lack of staff and bottlenecks in the processing of applications.
Mr Hayward reiterated a promise made in last year’s Budget to digitise and automate the Departmen’s paper-based applications process in the near future to make it more efficient but noted adequate and qualified staffing remained a problem.
