Opposition Senator Ryan Walters has called on Government to publish the areas where Barbados is facing labour and skills deficits to inform better decision-making.
St James South Member of Parliament Sandra Husbands, who is the acting Minister of Labour, agreed that making this information public would be useful. Their positions came during the meeting of Parliament’s Joint Select Committee (Standing) on the Economic and Productive Sectors on the Immigration Bill 2026 and Barbados Citizenship Bill 2026.
The bills were referred to the Joint Select Committee during the last parliamentary term and the group met yesterday under the chairmanship of Member of Parliament for St George South Dwight Sutherland.
The committee considered submissions from private sector organisations and members of the public on imported labour and the impact on housing affordability, the strain on health-care, transport and crime.
“We know there has been labour imported for construction, but what we don’t know is if there is really a shortage of construction workers or if those workers just came in because they were more affordable than local employees or employment in that field of construction,” Walters said.
“We think that something needs to be published to really say to Barbadians, these are the areas where we have deficits and shortages in and this is where we are doing well; so that this information can be consumed to make better decisions. Because all we are hearing right now is there are shortages, there are older people, we need more working people and there is no real clear direction on where this will go.”
In response, Husbands said as Minister for Technological and Vocational Training, reports on the shortages also came across her desk. She added some data was available, but it should be published so people were aware.
“Yes, in construction there is a definite shortage and I will explain how we arrived at that problem as a country. We also have shortages with the police, with nurses, with teachers. You are getting the constant poaching of some of those skills going overseas because they are looking for more pay and things like that,” she said.
“We have problems with legal drafters, we don’t have enough of those. In the medical area there are a number of specialised skills that we do not have. The hoteliers have also been reporting severe shortages with hotel workers.”
Husbands said the shortage of skilled labour in construction was precipitated by the economic downturn between 2008 and 2016 when jobs in the sector dried up. Many of the skilled people left the market and it was not seen as viable by young workers, so they did not pursue it as a profession, she added.
The COVID-19 pandemic, she continued, exacerbated the problem, as first investors pulled back, then there was a rush to rebuild.
“So that Barbados, for example, found itself with nine hotel properties that wanted to be built when we moved out of COVID. Normally, you would not get that large a number coming in at any one time within your economy. So the challenge you had then was that the demand for labour was much higher, but the skills were not there,” she explained. “Not that you didn’t have unemployed people, but they were willing to do their labour work, but they did not come with the essential construction skills.”
Husbands said Government was trying to address this shortage through the Construction Gateway which was aiming to train people in these areas. As similar thing was being done in the services sector “because we now need something like 4 000 hospitality workers that we don’t have”.
The minister acknowledged there were migrants willing to work for wages less than those offered to Barbadians, but said they should not be processed out of the market.
“We have to ensure that not only do they have the skills, but they also have the productivity and output to be competitive in their own market. And that is what we are assiduously working on as a Government, so that the Barbadian worker remains attractive as a person that you would want to employ because they will produce and they are able to present you with the skills. When you are going through this kind of change, change is always painful and it can be disruptive.” (SAT)
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