Legislation that would increase penalties for employers who flout work permit rules is soon to be tabled in the House of Assembly, Home Affairs Minister Michael Fahy said.“What we’ve pledged that we will do is follow through with ensuring that employers are held to account.”Mr Fahy was responding to this newspaper’s query about Government’s budgetary allocation to the compliance unit of his Ministry.The section’s $1.4 million allocation is $12,000 more than last year and it remains staffed by seven full-time officers.The Ministry estimates that the section will undertake 2,000 investigations — up by just ten from the current year — in the next fiscal year.The Minister told The Royal Gazette that successful prosecutions of rogue employers who face harsher penalties could have a deterrent effect and actually lead to fewer investigations.“As I’ve said, time and time again, we’ve seen applications coming in which are at times, frankly, not truthful in reaction to employers actually seeking Bermudians to take on different roles.“What normally happens then is not much penalty happens to the employer, so legislation is coming fairly shortly in relation to the kind of penalties that will be imposed on employers who fail to follow the policy in the way they are supposed to.“You don’t necessarily need an enforcement officer to go out and find that — a lot of times when you are looking at work permit applications, the information is just not correct.“That’s the first stage of enforcement. Our compliance officers spend a lot of time going out to job sites based on complaints and doing inspections on sites as well.”He said while he might like additional compliance officers, the Ministry was restricted by budgetary constraints.“What we can do is find ways to encourage employers to follow the rules properly.”And the Minister noted that a declaration to be included on work permit applications that the information being provided is the truth “will change the dynamic”.“Let that process go through first and then we can talk about where we can go next. But I think that will go a long way to boosting up our capability — to bring accountability back into the process.“It’s just not good enough to go after the employee all the time.”But he said the number of investigations could go down. “If you have one prosecution with quite a hefty fine, it’s like anything people then realise you’re serious and they’ll actually start to be a bit more truthful perhaps with the things they are submitting.”