(5 minutes read)
· The government of Seychelles has reviewed its Gainful Occupation Permit (GOP) framework to ensure availability of more jobs to locals
· The new amendment says that foreigners with a valid work permit, who have not been able to travel to Seychelles due to the closure of borders, will have their permits revoked
· However, the medical, fisheries and agriculture sectors are exempted.
The government of Seychelles has reviewed its Gainful Occupation Permit (GOP) framework to ensure availability of more jobs to locals. The new amendment says that foreigners with a valid work permit, who have not been able to travel to Seychelles due to the closure of borders, will have their permits revoked. However, the medical, fisheries and agriculture sectors are exempted.
The details of the procedure were announced at a joint press conference by the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the Immigration Department in Victoria recently. A new procedure has been introduced for granting Certificate of Entitlement. Businesses will have to submit the list of vacancies they intend to recruit from expatriates to the department in advance.
The Employment Department will assess all new requests through its internal mechanisms. This framework was initiated in July last year and revised in December taking the prevailing conditions in the labor market during the pandemic days.
Currently, in Seychelles – 115 islands in the western Indian Ocean – there are 17,026 foreigners on work permits from 25 nationalities. Majority of them are Indians. President Wavel Ramkalawan’s State of the Nation Address last month underscored the government’s plan to consider Seychellois first in employment.
To date, 2,763 workers were made redundant. Amongst them 1757 are foreigners and 1,213 Seychellois. And as of February, there are 1,765 returning GOP holders’ requests for entitlement to work. Amongst that, 1,220 were approved and 545 were declined. With the COVID-19 situation where some foreign workers were made redundant, employers were granted a free three-month extension on their GOPs to facilitate the repatriation of these workers. This process will now stop as there were abuses on the free extension as employers made no effort to send their workers back home. Effective as of Monday the 15th of February, the government stopped issuing the free GOP extension. Employers will now have to come and renew a GOP for their workers by paying fee for the permit.
