The Bermuda Employers Council has offered to loan staff to Immigration to speed up massive bottlenecks for work permit term limit exemptions.

Bermuda Employers Council (BEC) president William DeSilva said there were hundreds of applications for exemptions to policies which will turf out guest workers after six years.

But Mr. DeSilva said, although the policy is set to bite in April, many employees did not know whether they were coming or going.

A BEC subcommittee chaired by former head Eddie Saints has met twice this year with Government to look at glitches and bottlenecks.

Mr. DeSilva said: ?We asked them what their staffing level was compared to two years ago.

?We were informed it was identical for the most part.

?We said when you come up with policies such as good corporate citizenship and term limits for which we have to submit additional applications, if you are not willing to ramp up with staff to handle the added workload then the individuals are going to be inundated with more work without being able to get it done.?

Mr. DeSilva said he was pleased with the tone of the meetings.

?There was a bit of acknowledgement that the added work is in front of them, it?s evident and they have to address that because the bottleneck is sitting there in terms of processing these applications.?

He said there must be hundreds in the pipeline.

?They have not indicated to us they will get more staff. They have indicated the burden was bigger than they presumed it to be.?

So the BEC is offering its help, said Mr. DeSilva.

?If they require resources we will be happy to find them from within our member ranks to assist as was done before because, obviously, we like to help them reduce the bottleneck.?

He said most of the term-limit exemptions, which allow the successful applicant up to three years extra on the Island if they are granted ?key employee status?, seemed to be getting through when decisions were actually made. But many more people were being left in limbo as no decision had been taken.

?There are hundreds of applications in for key person status and some of them have been decided. But there are hundreds of unprocessed applications.

?There?s a human element to all, which is quite important, which is the stress for people who their organisations are seeking key person status for ? not knowing whether you are going to be here or not or whether you have to relocate.

?As well as the stress for organisations in trying to determine business needs without an answer at this point.

?Nobody likes to find out two weeks before an application is up that you have to hire someone new.

?Particularly if you have to go overseas to do that because the length of time it takes is substantially longer than two weeks.

?One would hope, because this is a new process there will be some leniency in terms of transition because businesses still have to function.?

He believed Immigration was concentrating on ordinary work permit applications and Good Corporate Citizenship applications because the deadline when the term limits begin isn?t until April next year. And he said Good Corporate Citizenship applications were further delaying the process without any noticeable benefit to anybody. He said: ?There are more than 100 applications for good corporate citizenship status but many have been bogged down by further questions from Government.?

Again manpower is an issue, said Mr. DeSilva, who added that the applications were much more involved than individual work permit applications.

He said good corporate citizenship status ?was originally designed to afford organisations with many work permit applications the opportunity to meet criteria for their applications to be fast-tracked.

?The benefits for those groups who have received status have not been noticeable at this point in time,? he said.

?The length of time work permits take is comparable to ordinary organisations.?

When applying for good corporate citizenship status, the company lays open its organisational structure to Government for scrutiny and explains its training goals to promote Bermudians.

?It?s a very in-depth application that Government requires,? said Mr. DeSilva.

He said companies with only one or two non-Bermudians on staff feel they are disadvantaged if they don?t have that status.

?It needs to be more clearly pronounced that it was designed for organisations with many, many work permits, such as accounting firms, which have them turning over every 18 or 20 months and multiple numbers of them compared to companies which have two or three people in for one to three years.

?Let?s face it, if you are an organisation that only has one non-Bermudian and you apply for good corporate citizenship now you have doubled the number of applications you have sitting in the Immigration department. ?You are creating more work for them for very little additional benefit.?

He called on Government to give a better clarification on what Good Corporate Citizenship meant.

With so much going on, Mr. DeSilva said ordinary work permit applications were being snagged up.

?Some of our members are experiencing work permit applications time frames of two to three months.

?We have spoken to Government about the fact that the average application today is taking longer today than it did 12 months ago. I believe they are working towards reducing that backlog.?

He urged companies to understand the problems and submit work permit applications earlier ? maybe up to three months in advance of the expiry date. ?We are encouraging members to bring the applications to the BEC office for vetting to make sure they are complete ? that all the information is there, so they don?t turn it in with one thing missing and it comes back to you and goes in a circle.

?Then we follow it along with them to make sure it?s being addressed in a timely manner.?

He said companies waiting for work permits to be processed then had to shell out for landing permits every time an employee waiting for a renewal flew off the Island.

?Because the bottleneck is there through no doing of the business community ? it?s not like the number of work permits have doubled in the last 12 months ? the Immigration department should perhaps review the landing permits requirement or at least the charge for it in light of the fact there?s a pending application.

?So perhaps if you have got someone sitting before you, you can say it is sitting here, we understand that, we will extend the landing permit without charging you for it,? he suggested. Companies must pay $27 for each landing permit and there is a $125 fee for landing without one. One-year work permits cost $616 while five-year permits are $3,082.

Asked if he liked the work permit term-limit policy, Mr. DeSilva said: ?I understand what drove the term limits, that Bermuda being a small place geographically is trying to reduce the number of long term residents.

?But I don?t necessarily believe the policy in and off itself will achieve that without having problems.

?One of them which springs to mind very quickly, is if you have a non-Bermudian on a permit who is fitting in very well with our community as well as in the organisation they work for to send them packing because of a six-year term limit and bring someone in who winds up being disruptive only causes our community concern and a business organisation concern.

?The proof will be in the pudding as to whether it?s been well thought through or not.? tried to get a response from Government on Mr. DeSilva?s comments but emailed questions went unanswered and a scheduled interview with Home Affairs Minister Derrick Burgess was cancelled yesterday.

However, Mr. DeSilva said he backed Mr. Burgess?s tough stance over standing up to employers who were bending the law by allowing employees to do work they shouldn?t.

He said in some cases it was employees who were fiddling the system, while the employer was ignorant of the problem.

?We support his efforts to quash it,? he said. ?We certainly try to make sure within our membership ranks it doesn?t happen.

?And if it does we have the ability to sanction our members and if they are not prepared to work within the confines of the law ? kick them out all together. But that hasn?t happened yet.?