Tourism officials are left to figure out why 95 percent of their staff under the age of 30 resigns.

An audit into the Ministry of Tourism revealed as much and Minister of Tourism Dionisio D’Aguilar said the ministry is working to figure out why and how to keep those persons employed at the ministry.

He added that the ministry hired 12 new employees under 30, after the audit also revealed only 9 percent of the ministry’s staff was under 30-years-old.

“We had to evaluate why we were not attracting young people and if so, why were they leaving,” D’Aguilar said.

“We have done and in depth analysis of everyone in the ministry.  What functions they are performing?  Where do we have gaps?  Where are we over staffed and trying to move people into the areas where we are short staffed, if they have the necessary skills?  

“We have undertaken a recruitment exercise to recruit people who have the disciplines that we don’t have and that we need.”       

During the audit, each tourism employee was interviewed and the results evaluated. 

It led to some person’s contracts not being renewed. 

“I think there were a number of contracts that were mutually agreed not to be renewed,” D’Aguilar said.      

“Some were we decided not to renew, but there were equally as many contracts where we went out and hired new people.” 

Despite this, D’Aguilar expects to bring on an additional 10 to 15 people specifically in areas like communication and social media as the audit revealed the ministry was deficient in those areas.