Archive for August, 2009
“Key” hurricane reminder
(CNS): The Postal Service is reminding customers of two easy tasks to help ease their minds before, during and after any storm: One, collect your mail during the alert phase of a hurricane; two, know where your post-office box keys are at all times. Postmaster General Sheena Glasgow said that everyone’s hurricane checklist should include collecting mail at the early stages of an approaching storm, preferably during the alert phase. When the second phase – called a watch – has been announced, Postal Service staff begins retrieving mail from individual post-office boxes and bundling it.
“This is when the window of opportunity for picking up your mail gets smaller,” Glasgow said.
But while Postal Services staff has some discretion in deciding when to begin pulling mail from individual boxes, it has no say in deciding when government offices are advised to close. “For the Postal Service staff, our plans call for every piece of mail to be secure,” Glasgow said. “So once government announces that its offices are closing, we begin putting mail in heavy-duty plastic bags for safe storage. These bags are taped and placed in large, covered plastic tubs, and we seal the covers to provide additional security. Then, as much as space allows, we store the tubs off the floor.”
Because there are usually a few last-minute tasksto check off the list when a hurricane is approaching, PS staff helps customers to remember mail collection by putting out announcements through the media.
“We strongly advise customers to heed these announcements because after a storm, it naturally takes some time to return mail to the individual post boxes. And since life today doesn’t stop for storms, the timely delivery of your mail is even more important,” Glasgow said.
The Postal Service notes that it only takes one hurricane heading our way for people to start panicking and forgetting important tasks. “You have no idea how many people had to replace their post office keys after Hurricane Ivan in 2004. There is a $30 charge to change a lock,” reminded
Leadership training for Rotaract Blue members
(CNS): Three Rotaract Blue members recently became the first in the club to receive the renowned Rotary Leadership Institute training, which is designed to develop young people’s leadership skills. Rotaract Blue is a local club which is dedicated to encouraging young people’s involvement in professional development, leadership development and community service projects. The programme is sponsored by Rotary Central, which arranged for the training to take place. Stephanie Scott, club Director of Service is one of the Rotaractors who benefitted from the recent training sessions on the 8 and 9 August at the University College of the Cayman Islands.
She said, “This was a great opportunity for us to improve our knowledge of Rotary and develop our leadership skills. We all found the experience very rewarding.” The course participants, who also included club president, Tricia Cacho, and club Vice President, Yvette Cacho, completed levels one and two of the institute’s three level training programme.Each course level requires about seven hours to complete.
Stephanie Scott and Yvette Cacho were both sponsored by local Management Services firm, Walkers SPV. Richard Ruffer, Senior Vice President of Walkers SPV Limited, commented, “Walkers SPV and the rest of the Walkers Management Services Group are delighted to sponsor Rotaract Blue’s participation in this year’s Rotary International Leadership Training Seminar.” He continued, “As an organisation and a responsible corporate citizen, we are always looking for ways that we can make a contribution to the local community and we have been very impressed with the work of Rotaract Blue and the commitment of its young professionals.” Ruffer added, "We believe that organisations such as Rotaract Blue, which instill the ideals of community service and social obligation, present a unique opportunity to businesses such as ourselves, because the contributions that we can make are multiplied significantly by their hard work and dedication to the community." Walkers SPV plans to sponsor the participation of other Rotaractors on the Institute’s course in the future.
Rotary Central President, Paul Byles, was also enthusiastic about the training sessions. He commented, “Rotary Central is proud to be supporting leadership training for Rotaract Blue members. It is a great way for them to develop leadership skills and prepare them for future roles as community leaders.” Byles added, “We are very grateful to Walkers SPV for their support of Rotaract Blue.”
Solar panels drop in price
(NY Times): When Greg Hare looked into putting solar panels on his ranch-style home in Magnolia, Tex., last year, he decided he could not afford it. “I had no idea solar was so expensive,” he recalled. But the cost of solar panels has plunged lately, changing the economics for many homeowners. Mr. Hare ended up paying $77,000 for a large solar setup that he figures might have cost him $100,000 a year ago. “I just thought, ‘Wow, this is an opportunity to do the most for the least,’ ” Mr. Hare said. For solar shoppers these days, the price is right. Panel prices have fallen about 40 percent since the middle of last year, driven down partly by an increase in the supply of a crucial ingredient for panels.
Cayman gets poor report from FCCA
(CNS): A visiting official from the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association described Royal Watler cruise terminal as “organized chaos”. Talking to News 27 about the facilities for their members and passengers, FCCA officials said it was time Cayman kept up with the rest of the Caribbean in terms of berthing facilities and customer experience. One of the major problems, they said, is the lengthy transfer of passengers from ship to shore and that an eight hour port of call is actually a six hour call because of the time spent tendering from the ship and back. (Picture courtesy News 27)
News 27’s Tammi Sulliman said the officials pointed to another problem – lack of proper signage directing passengers where to go when they come ashore. The officials said the little we have was too confusing.
“The most important thing to Cayman is that people spend as much time as possible having a phenomenal time spending money,” said one official.
However, despite the poor reviews, Sulliman reported the FCCA officials as saying it’s not too late to show cruise ship passengers the best service that Cayman has to offer.
Peer questions UK oversight of territories
(CNS): Too much money and too few people is a recipe for bad government, so says one member of the House of Lords about the UK’s Overseas Territories. Liberal Democrat peer William Wallace has said that while the action to force tax havens to loosen their bonds of secrecy is to be welcomed, it is important for the UK to remember many tax havens, like the Cayman Islands, as UK dependent territories benefit from Whitehall’s relaxed oversight regime. Theliberal life peerpenned his views in a letter to the Guardian one of the UK’s leading quality dailies in response to an editorial regarding tax havens.
Wallace, who served as Director of Studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs for twelve years, said many of the world’s leading tax havens fall under the British crown.
"Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos are all significant offshore financial centres. All benefit from the British system of law, from the expectation of offshore investors that British oversight guarantees higher standards than competitor centres – and all have benefited from Whitehall’s relaxed oversight regime,” Wallace wrote.
He noted the strong evidence of systemic corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which has forced the UK government to impose direct rule, and questioned if the current model for autonomy in overseas territories is sustainable. “Too much money in communities with too few people is a recipe for bad government,” he wrote.
Wallace said that the situation in the Crown Dependencies is better but noted that Jersey and Guernsey have only partially, and reluctantly, lifted secrecy on offshore accounts, and continue to offer incentives for corporations and wealthy individuals whose main business is onshore to relocate on their islands.
“Any thorough campaign against the large-scale tax avoidance and evasion constituted by offshore secrecy must therefore raise the question of how the British government oversees its own dependencies, and what changes in the relationship between the UK and its dependencies may be needed,” Wallace stated.
Anglin-McLaughlin face off
(CNS): Minister of Education, Rolston Anglin, and the former education minister, Alden McLaughlin, faced off in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday (26 August) over education policy, the Education Modernisation Law and the situation with the new schools. While the former minister accused the new minister of abandoning the positive policies he had put in place, the new minister accused the former of building monuments to excess.
As Anglin lamented the problems he faced dealing with the development of the new schools, McLaughlin challenged him to release the latest exam results. The heated exchange between the two politicians is unique in modern parliamentary political history as Anglin is the first sitting education minister facing an immediate predecessor in opposition.
Answering questions regarding his commitment to the implementation of the International Baccalaureate, Anglin admitted that teachers and educators said it was a step in the right direction but he would not commit to its adaptation. He added that when he arrived in the ministry there was no formal research to justify its adoption and he was undertaking a cost analysis and review of its implementation.
Following questions from his opposition counterpart, the minster made three statements on education issues — the first justifying the delay in the implementation of the education law, the second regarding the current situation with the school development projects, and the third on the need for a systematic review of the scholarship process.
Anglin said that the former minister was misleading the public about the decision to delay the implementation of the new education law with his emotional outbursts to the press. The new education minister said he was committed to implementing the previous education minister’s law but he would not be intimidated by "political posturing” to implement it before the necessary work was done.
“The former minister has reportedly told the press he is devastated,” Anglin said. “But these emotional outbursts are about ego. Well, I have a word of advice for him: education reform is not about him it’s about our children,” Anglin said, asking him what successes he had actually enjoyed during his four years.
McLaughlin responded by asking the minister if he was going to publish the exam results for this year, which he said were the best Cayman had ever seen since it started to record examination results and suggested that was at least one success indicator. CNS understands that this year’s results for those leaving the public school system were more than 10% better than previous years. Historically only around 22-23% of Cayman students have averaged five passes or more at O’ level and equivalent examinations since records were kept. However, passes for 2009 may be as high as 38%, offering a significant improvement in 16 plus exam results. Anglin said he would be releasing the statistics and was pleased that they were positive.
The new minister reserved his major criticisms of his predecessor for his statement on the update of the school development projects at the John Gray Campus and the Clifton Hunter site.
“An inordinate amount of my time and that of my chief officer has been spent on putting these two projects on a stronger footing,” he said. He condemned the former minster for not having a project manager in place and for the excesses that had arisen because he did not set realistic budgets but told designers to build to meet an “educational vision".
Anglin said he was recently forced to go to Cabinet to secure an extra $6.83 million that was needed to pay for works that had been completed over and above work budgeted for in this financial year, which he said was typical of the challenges he now faced in managing the projects.
He also warned of further problems ahead in that Caymanian teachers were not prepared to succeed in the new teaching environments the schools provided and that that there hasbeen no budgetary provision for the furniture, fixtures and equipment, or maintenance and operational requirements for the two new schools. “While I have taken some urgent action to bring some measure of stability and to staunch the flow of blood on these projects, we still need a cure,” the new minister told the Legislative Assembly.
Miller won’t block AG reports
(CNS): Fears that the public release of the auditor general’s reports will be delayed by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) may have been alleviated following proposals formalising the process of their presentation to the House by Ezzard Miller, the PAC chair. Miller has suggested that the AG’s reports be formerly tabled in the Legislative Assembly as soon as possible after the AG has given a report to the speaker before they are released for public consumption. Miller assured the people, however, that the reports would not have to wait on the PAC review before becoming public documents.
In a position paper presented to the LA on Wednesday afternoon (26 August), Miller stated that the current procedure for handling the AG’s reports was not defined and he proposed to formalise the process by amending standing orders to require the reports be laid on the table of the House at the first available sitting after the AG has handed his report to the speaker. Thereafter, he said the reports would become public documents and he proposed placing time limits on PAC to lay its review of the AG’s reports — within three months — and then for government to lay its minutes (or comment) within a further three months, ensuring that all of the AGs reports would be addressed within six months of completion.
Miller told the LA that because the last PAC did not complete a single review of any AG reports, the Standing Orders had been changed so that they could be made public without waiting on a PAC review. However, the independent MLA for North Side said the process had not been formalized and he could find no precedent which supported the current procedure of the AG merely handing his reports to the speaker and then them becoming public documents two days later.
“The long established parliamentary procedure to make any document, report or other matter that is owned by parliament public is through the act of laying it on the table of the House,” he said.
Ezzard suggested that a media circus had ensued in recent weeks over the question of the reports, with the AG seeking to recruit people, such as the Information Commissioner, to his corner, but he said as chair of PAC he had no intention of preventing the reports from becoming public but was merely seeking to reinstate proper procedures.
Questions over the public exposure of the AG’s reports were raised following various comments made by one of the committee members in the press. Former talk-show host, Ellio Solomon, the fourth elected member for George Town and a one time advocate of transparency and accountability, had suggested that the AG’s reports should not be released for public consumption until the committee had the opportunity to review them. The suggestions raised serious concerns in the AG’s office and the wider public domain that blocking the reports would be a backward step.
Miller told the LA that he had received a call from the country’s highest executive who had threatened him with his constitutional powers despite the fact that the issue was a parliamentary one and not one for that particular person’s office. Miller was called up by the speaker when he suggested the “highest executive” had no business interfering with parliamentary matters.
Following his presentation in the House, Miller told CNS that he never had any intention to hold back the AG’s reports and thathe was the person driving to have all of the reports examined and reviewed by PAC following five years of inertia. “If these proposals are approved there will be no more argument about procedure and protocol’” he said.
Auditor General Dan Duguay said that, although he had not yet had chance to see Miller’s proposals, on first review they seemed to be a step forward rather than back. “My goal has always been to ensure that the reports from the Auditor General’s Office reach the public in as timely way as possible,” Duguay said. “Following consideration of the proposals and any possible loopholes that these procedures may reveal I hope we can continue to move forward with the public scrutiny of these reports.”
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Suspect crack dealer caught
(CNS): Police said this afternoon that a 55-year-old man is currently in custody after being arrested on suspicion of possession of cocaine with intent to supply, possession of cocaine, possession of ganja and consumption of a controlled drug. The man was arrested early this morning (26 August) at 6.35am as he cycled on Firewood Close off Capt. Joe and Osbert Road. 17 packets of wrapped crack cocaine, 7 pieces of crack cocaine,a quarter ounce of cocaine powder and a small amount of ganja.was found on him.
The arrest was made by officers working on ‘Operation Lacovia’, which involves on and off-duty West Bay officers supported by the K9 unit targeting known criminals and tackling serious areas of crime such as burglary and drug crime. The suspect was searched under the misuse of drugs law when the crack and other drugs were found.
“Drug use is a plague in our communities,” said Area Commander Chief Inspector Angelique Howell. “It has a devastating effect on our families, neighbours and the society at large and we are determined to continue to target those involved in using and selling illegal substances.”
Anyone with information about crime taking place in the Cayman Islands should contact their local police station or Crime Stoppers on 800-8477 (TIPS). All persons calling Crime Stoppers remain anonymous, and are eligible for a reward of up to $1000, should their information lead to an arrest or recovery of property/drugs.
Three nabbed red handed in GT home
(CNS): Responding to a report of suspicious activity in the early hours of Monday morning, the RCIPS George Town burglary team found three men inside a home on Selkirk Drive with suspected stolen property still in their possession. Police say the report came in at around 4:00am on 24 August, and subsequent investigations led to the arrest of the three men, aged, 24, 22 and 18, who are currently in police custody. Police say the recovered items included three lap-tops, a number of cell phones, a digital camera, two ipods and some jewellery.
A number of break-ins had occurred in the Selkirk Drive area that night and all are under investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department.
The RCIPS says it is working hard to tackle burglaries, which includes having burglary teams in operation across the Island, holding regular road checks to disrupt criminal’s movements on the road and targeting known offenders. Residents are reminded to play their part in addressing property crime by ensuring their homes and property are secure and by recording the serial numbers of electronic and high value goods.
“Many of the offences we have taking place involve offenders getting in through insecure windows or doors,” said Detective Chief Inspector Peter Kennett. “This makes the burglars life very easy. Please make sure that all your doors and windows are secure. If a window catch or lock is broken, spend a few dollars and get it fixed or you could face the consequence of losing your prized possessions – often of extreme sentimental but low monetary value. Alarms do deter burglars and if they activate the burglar will run off empty handed.”
The police also take this opportunity to warn business owners, particularly those in the construction business, to be mindful of security. The warning comes following a number of thefts of power tools and construction equipment.
All business owners should ensure their property is as secure as it can be and CCTV and alarms should be installed and fully operational. More crime reduction advice can be found on the police website at www.rcips.ky.
“There is a considerable increase in burglaries,” said Kennett. “So please be vigilant and report any suspicious activity to police. Burglary is a despicable and extremely upsetting crime that the RCIPS is battling to combat.”
Anyone with information about crime taking place in the Cayman Islands should contact their local police station or Crime Stoppers on 800-8477 (TIPS). All persons calling Crime Stoppers remain anonymous, and are eligible for a reward of up to $1000, should their information lead to an arrest or recovery of property/drugs.
Arrests made in murder case
(CNS): Two men, both aged 22 and both residents of George Town, have been arrested on suspicion of murdering Omar Samuels in the McField Lane area of George Town in the early hours of Sunday, 5 July. Police say the pair were arrested by the murder enquiry team yesterday (Tuesday, 25 August) and remain in police custody at this time. Samuels, 28, was found suffering a gunshot wound to his leg. A post mortem was carried out on Sunday, 12 July, which showed Samuels suffered a single gunshot wound to his leg which penetrated the femoral artery.
Detective Inspector Kim Evans, who is leading the enquiry, said that initially assistance from the community was slow. However, persistent police work and the growing strength of the community helped people to come forward. “I would like to thank all those who have spoken with us,” he said. “We have been working hard to piece together what took place and all the information that has been given to us has been valuable.”
Evans also noted that officers continue to work with the community of McField Lane. “We want to ensure we are doing all we can to make people feel safe,” he said. The enquiry into Samuels’ death is continuing and anyone with information who has not passed it on is encouraged to do so.
DI Kim Evans can be reached on 925-6761 or 925-7240. An anonymous answerphone has been set up so residents can pass information directly to the police without giving their identity. The number is 949-7777. Alternatively, people can also call Crime Stoppers on 800-8477 (TIPS) which is answered overseas. All persons calling Crime Stoppers remain anonymous, and are eligible for a reward of up to $1000, should their information lead to an arrest or recovery of property/drugs.