HOTEL mogul and Chairman of the Jamaica Observer Gordon 'Butch' Stewart says Jamaica has the single best workforce in all of the Caribbean.

"... I am not saying that to blow smoke, I am saying that because it is a fact of life," he said, explaining that 90-odd per cent of the workers in the hotels here in Jamaica are Jamaicans.

The hotelier, who has Sandals hotels in several Caribbean territories, said that while every island has its own strength, the most diligent workers are from Jamaica.

Stewart, who was addressing yesterday's ceremony to mark the Observer's 20th anniversary, commended the current and previous government for being flexible in allowing work permits for foreigners to come to Jamaica, noting that other islands were not as flexible. "... And their product is going downhill and they don't even know why it is going downhill because they don't have a big enough mind to realise that our [Jamaican] people can learn from other people because other people learn from our people," he said.

"It is impossible to get staff to work like the Jamaicans work, once you train them," Stewart said.

A great model for success, he added, is to train persons at every level to take them up to the next level. "We take people from every walk of life but when you need a particular skill and you don't have it and you force a skill on people who cannot do the work you will have a bad product," Stewart said.

He noted that building the Observer had its pain and struggles but the diligence of the people that make it up made life easy.

"It would have been three times as hard by not having the editors that we have... the Vernon's (Davidson) of this world," he said.