The government is right that work-permit fees need to be revised, but the regime scheduled to take effect in April seems needlessly complicated and thus unlikely to be optimally effective.
Instead, officials should keep the current system in place and simply raise fees for higher earners — a measure that would be much more easily manageable for businesses and the Labour Department alike.
Change is certainly needed. Under the existing graduated scale, annual permit fees are capped at $1,000, a fee that applies to all permit holders who make more than $25,000. This means that a financial services professional earning $200,000 annually pays the same as a labourer earning $25,001.
This seems unreasonable, and it surely is a missed opportunity for government revenue.
However, the fee structure Gazetted last month — which is presumably the baseline for the system that government plans to launch in April — is extraordinarily complicated because it assigns work-permit fees by salary and job-type rather than by salary alone.
This system is not fundamentally flawed: In theory, it could give the government a tool to regulate particular industries individually.
However, given that the Labour Department currently struggles to process work permits in a timely manner under the existing system, the proposed changes do not bode well.
Indeed, the proposal raises many questions that have not been answered. Who, for example, will determine which employees fall into which categories? Who will be responsible for ensuring that businesses do not buck the system by mischaracterising their job roles? What about the many jobs that aren’t listed in the proposed law? How will the Labour Department handle the additional workload that will be necessary for administering the new system? The list goes on.
Given that the scheduled launch is less than four months away and government has not answered such questions, let alone held a public meeting on the topic, a smooth rollout seems highly unlikely.
Moreover, the new red tape would surely be onerous for businesses and government alike at a time when leaders have promised to streamline the work-permit process.
In fact, the government has already fallen behind on this streamlining endeavour: Leaders promised in October that by the start of this year work-permit renewals would be processed within two weeks and new work permits would be processed within a month. Now these goals apparently have been bumped to April.
Instead of taking on a complicated new regime, then, the government should consider expanding the system currently in place by adding several new fee levels for workers who make more than $25,000. Such an increase would be relatively easy to implement and to administer, and it could greatly increase government revenue in a way that is fair to all concerned.
But officials shouldn’t take our word for it. They should hold a few public meetings in order to solicit the opinions of business owners, workers and other residents.
Once a decision is made that reflects a wider community consensus, the government should give several months of warning before implementation.
A few years down the road, government might be in a better position to implement the newly proposed system. But now is not the time.
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