Sunniebgi

HI Steph..

how are ya??? Got a call in to my friend.. waiting to see what says..

later

faye_louise

Hi, im new this but here it goes...

I am currently in my first year studying international tourism management at university. As part of this course we have a 12 month placement in our second year to work in the tourism industry anywhere in the world, i would love to do this in Barbados.
Does anyone have any advice about how i would go about sorting out a placement there?. All feedback is appreciated!
thanks x

zanne

As an Intern or Employee?

faye_louise

It would be as an employee
x

NyandKoby

Hi Bajanboy,
I have a caricom country passport and a degree and 2 diploma's but when i advised immigration of this they didnt seam bothered.
Where or who could I contact to find out how I could obtain this certificate.
The job I have been accepted for will not apply for my work permit until 6 weeks before I'm due to start which is end of october. I really am looking for any way to stay in barbados until then and a way my son can start school in sept.
Please help

zanne

Immigration is all over the place right now...I have a pending Citizenship App. and yesterday 3 different people down there told me 3 different things about getting a work permit while I am waiting for my citizenship, ranging from easy to obtain to possible and then finally absolutely forbidden. They have no idea what is going on there.

So frustrating...

pgtips

bureaucracy is always a pain in the butt, wherever you go !!!
In the caribbean you need a lot of laid back patience.

zanne

I have patience...I used to make a living wading through bureaucracy, but this is unreal here. So much misinformation and apathy.

Jack Bowman

How true that is, at least as far as my experience of Barbados is concerned.

And how utterly wretched the economic future of this island would be if everyone adopted that attitude as an operating philosophy.

Amid mind-numbing bureaucratic inertia (an inertia nurtured over decades by molly-coddling protection, a laughable absence of any real competition in the public or private sectors, and institutionalized monopolies), the only way things change for the better is for people to ask for better. In the modern world, depending on the “laid back patience” of its residents is simply not an option for Barbados.

My telephone connection died last week, and with it my Internet connection. Like millions of people in the kind of developed country that Barbados hopes to be by 2015, I am entirely dependent on an Internet connection to make a living – just as, only 20 years ago, billions of people world-wide were dependant on a telephone to make a living.

I had to mount an entire campaign simply to get this problem fixed. I spent, literally, hours on my mobile phone trying to get it fixed and listening to people tell me obvious lies (literally, actual lies) about why it couldn’t be fixed soon.

In person I am extremely reserved and I hate aggression. But when I’m faced with a mind-numbing level of incompetence and bureaucratic inertia I tend to become less reserved.

After a week, when the little local joke of a telecommunications company had finally managed to restore my communication, and after I’d lost a lot of income, I asked one of their representatives, on the phone, how the company proposed to recompense me for the loss. He told me that his employers were barred from recompensing me. I asked to know the name and date of the statute stipulating that prohibition. He couldn’t tell me (what a surprise!).

We came to an arrangement. The next time I have a problem with my telephone (and I have no doubt that there will be one), I hope that my previous campaign will make a difference. My campaign consisted—every single time I found myself talking to someone who told me that something was impossible—of asking to speak to their supervisor, and then asking to talk to that supervisor’s supervisor, and so forth, for hours, until I got almost to the God of telephony. It takes a long time, and it takes commitment, and you have to lay in a supply of sandwiches, but it pays off in the end.

So I agree with you, pgtips: here, you definitely need a lot of laid back patience.

And I think that if “laid back patience” comes to be accepted in this country as a virtue rather than a vice, the country has no hope at all of realizing its aim to be developed by 2015. Elsewhere in the world, demanding (always politely, always with restraint, always with measured tones) that someone actually provides you with the service that you’re paying them for is, in the end, a mark of development.

zanne

"And I think that if “laid back patience” comes to be accepted in this country as a virtue rather than a vice, the country has no hope at all of realizing its aim to be developed by 2015. Elsewhere in the world, demanding (always politely, always with restraint, always with measured tones) that someone actually provides you with the service that you’re paying them for is, in the end, a mark of development."

Well said Jack...this needs to extend to the public and private sectors.

IkklePiranha

Wow, I can't believe this thread is still going!!

So I've not managed to escape the UK to BBDS yet, but I still hope I can one day!

Netsirk

I'll second that, I had to beg and plead just to APPLY to have ADSL installed, let alone actually have it installed (which will take weeks apparently).

I temper my patience with the local spirits, it allows the illogical to fade into the blurry background...

KeithWill

True, I had a couple of interviews last year (July) went really well. I finally got the no from one company in Feb this year, and I am still waiting (with prompting) to get a Y/N on the 2nd job. It's been going on that long I have mailed the guy so we can have a reunion interview when I go back again in July this year! With that in mind I will now start sending the mails to companies requesting some time to sit and chat about oportunities for when I go. I will get my dream eventually....

IkklePiranha

That's pretty good going!
What sort of companies?

KeithWill

One was a Construction company - with Joinery side of things, the other one that is still on-going is a car importer.

It's so hard, I guess the culture is to take things easy, but I am sure that people do not like to say no..and keep you dangling (not on purpose). I think the hold up is the work permit side of things, I am currently studying for my degree which seems to be a pre-requisite to getting a chance there.

As I say though, I will not give up. I'm just looking through companies now to start bombarding them with my CV.

I live in hope..........:-)