Archive for April, 2010

Local firm does its bit to fight unemployment

Local firm does its bit to fight unemployment

| 07/04/2010 | 0 Comments

(CNS): Bucking the trend of job cuts and recruitment freezes local business conglomerate dms Organization Ltd. (dms) has recently recruited nine Caymanians to the firm including its affiliates and and subsidiary. Despite the economic recession dms Vice President Krista Pell said the firm is continuing to recruit and is still on the look out for more local talent to join its varied and diverse range of businesses dealing with property and finance.

 
“Despite recent global economic hardships, dms has been fortunate to execute a sound people strategy and has continued to build our firm and expand our employee base,” she said. “It is dms’ philosophy that the key to our success is our people, and as such, we are delighted to welcome these talented professionals to our team. As a conglomerate with stake in a range of fields, we continue to actively recruit and encourage anyone wishing to join our team to apply at application@dms.com.ky.”
 
After joining dms in the fall of 2009, Mindy Kimball was promoted in just a few months from Receptionist to Office Services Administrator where she is responsible for planning and administering the policies relating to all phases of operational activity for dms.
 
 
Photo caption (left to right): Kristin Ebanks, Carney Ebanks, Valdreen Lindo, Janine Mitchell, Leisha Taylor, Mindy Kimball, Tamika Gilliland, Jonathon Doak and Monique Williams
 
“With this position came increased responsibility which is something I value as I enjoy rising to challenges. dms is a company that I truly enjoy working for as their commitment to their staff is highly recognizable,” Kimball saidI look forward to many years with the company.” Mindy was previously employed with KPMG as a Personal Assistant in the Tax Department.
 
Tamika Gilliland has also recently joined dms’ Office Services department as a Receptionist where she says there is ample opportunity for growth which is what attracted her to the company. “An organization that promotes from within and encourages learning and development is just the place for me to get started on my career path,” she added.
 
Valdreen Lindo joined dms as a Finance Administrator during mid 2009 and has been an impactful contributor to the Finance team. Previously Valdreen worked in similar roles at Cayman Surveying and Property Consultants Ltd. and CML Offshore Recruitment. She holds a BA degree in Accounting from the University College of the Cayman Islands. Keeping things close to home, Valdreen’s brother Ian Lindo is also employed with dms Corporate Services Ltd., an affiliate of the conglomerate.
 
Joining the dms Properties team in the summer of 2009, Carney Ebanks has been a welcome addition as the Maintenance Person. He is responsible for ensuring the upkeep of the conglomerate’s marquee properties including dms House, dms Place, dms Centre and dms Broadcasting Centre.
  
Within the dms financial services companies, dms Management Ltd. and dms Corporate Services Ltd. also continue to expand their teams, welcoming Jonathon Doak and Leisha Taylor as Corporate Administrators. In their roles, they administer client needs including administration of official corporation records and financial services transactions. Leisha was previously employed with Ernst & Young (Cayman Islands) as a Client Serving Associate Supervisor while Jonathon recently earned his LLB (Hons) at Cayman Islands Law School. 
 
Janine Mitchell has also joined dms Management as a Finance Administrator. Formerly, she was employed with KPMG as an Accounting Assistant. She also previously interned with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.
 
Offshore Business Solutions, another expanding dms financial services company, has hired Monique Williams as an Administrative Assistant focused on serving client needs. Monique is one of several of dms’ former Junior Achievement students who have returned to dms after graduation and are now employed on a full-time basis.  “While serving as the President of the first dms student group in the Junior Achievement programme I had the opportunity to learn about career opportunities with the company,” she said. “I have only been with OBS for a month, but already I am confident that this is a company that will challenge me and help me to excel.”
 
Saxon Administration Ltd., a dms affiliate, recently hired Kristin Ebanks as a Finance Manager where she directs all financial management functions and oversees general accounting functions. Previously, she served as the Finance Manger for the Public Service Pensions Board and thus her experience in a similar role will be a great asset to her new role.
dms Organization is a business conglomerate engaged in the financial services, real estate and media industries.
 
 
 
 

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Suspect released over Ming shooting

Suspect released over Ming shooting

| 07/04/2010 | 0 Comments

(CNS): Police confirmed on Tuesday that one of the two men arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of Damion Omar Ming (left) has been released on bail.  Ming who was gunned down close to his homein Birch Tree Hill Road, West Bay last month was laid to rest over the weekend. News 27 reports that friends and family gathered at the Wesleyan Holiness Church in West Bay on Saturday (3 April) to pay their final respects to the 29-year-old who was the 5th murder victim of 2010. One man remains in police custody in connection with Ming’s shooting but no charges have been made.

Meanwhile, the man accused of shooting a woman in broad daylight last month also appeared in court on Tuesday morning. 32-year-old Royden Robinson is charged with attempted murder and possession of an unlicensed firearm.  The charges followed a police operation in the George Town area last week Friday (2 April). 
Robinson claims he had nothing to do with the shooting but it’s alleged he shot a woman in the face at Barnes Plaza.  She sustained serious injuries and was hospitalised for several weeks though police confirm she has now been released. Robinson has been remanded to Northward Prison and is due to appear in court 13 April

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Minister encourages Cayman to get active for health

Minister encourages Cayman to get active for health

| 07/04/2010 | 9 Comments

(CNS): In his message for World Health Day the minster for health is encouraging people to get out and get active. With growing obesity problems in children, diabetes widespread and heart disease one of the three leading causes of death in the Cayman Islands Mark Scotland says Caymanians need to return to some old time outdoor pastimes. This year’s World Health Day theme is about city living and people’s health. And while the Cayman lifestyle may be more laid back than the average metropolis, rapid population growth and economic development have still brought a new set of health problems.

 
 
Message from Minister of Health Mark Scotland for world Health day 7 April:
 
Health statistics show that globally, mankind is making encouraging strides in solving some key health problems: The number of under-nourished children is declining; more than a dozen countries have reported a 50 percent reduction in malaria cases; access to HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries has increased, and almost a billion more people have safe drinking water than during the previous decade.
 
Paradoxically though, certain health risks remain and have become even more acute,including obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse. Collectively, these and other preventable risks account for over 40 percent of the 58 million annual deaths worldwide, not to mention the huge loss of healthy life years they cause.
 
And troublingly, local statistics confirm that Cayman is not bucking the trend:
Public health school entry screenings for 2008-09 revealed a looming obesity-fuelled health crisis. More than 27 percent of children under the age of 6 and almost 38 percent of school students aged between 11 and 14 are overweight.
Obesity increases the risk for diabetes and heart disease, and already the latter is one of the three leading causes of death in the Cayman Islands.
National Drug Council (NDC) figures show that some 20 percent of our population smokes regularly, with one in every five smokers consuming a pack or more of cigarettes daily. Moreover, a 2007 NDC report on student drug use confirmed a marked increase in smoking among 7th-graders – an early warning sign that future smoking rates may rise.
 
Ironically, these findings and risks are exacerbated by the very thing that helps curb many other health challenges – namely, urbanization.
 
It is therefore entirely fitting that the 2010 World Health Day will focus on how city living affects people’s health. And while most persons view the Cayman lifestyle as being somewhat more laidback than is the average urban experience, even here, rapid population growth and economic development have removed us from things as simple as walking to our neighbours or – for our children – playing outside until sunset.  
 
This year’s World Health Day theme – 1000 cities, 1000 lives – thus calls us to rediscover creative and wholesome ways of relieving stress and staying healthy while living in an urban environment.
 
Likewise, my challenge to you is also to defy negative trends: Get out and get active, involve your family, friends and your entire community in reviving old time habits. Hide the TV remote and enjoy an ocean swim instead. Switch off the PlayStation and take your children for kite flying or build a sand castle. It might seem too good to be true, but in this instance, the first step to a healthier Cayman is just that simple!
 
 
 

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Civil service asks what to cut

Civil service asks what to cut

| 07/04/2010 | 75 Comments

(CNS): Following government’s decision to ask the civil service to cut both operational costs and its own human resource costs, public sector workers are now asking which services people will be prepared to do without. While members of the Cayman Islands Civil Service Association say there may be room for some trimming, to make the 8% HR cut requested some services will be sacrificed. The president of CICSA has said that the Civil Service is already understaffed in many areas and further cuts in HR will mean cuts to the quality and efficiency of services that survive, while others may have to be sacrificed altogether.

“People must now ask themselves which services they believe the country can do without,” said James Watler, the CISCA president.
With the ball now in the civil service court, the president of the association explained that if HR is to be cut further than it already has been, then there will be an impact on the quality of services offered and those in government or the wider community must decide what they feel they can do without.
Watler explained that while it may be possible to trim what people have described as ‘fat’ in some areas of government, many departments are already understaffed.  While government is facing the need to cut expenditure because of the decline in revenues, Watler pointed out that  it still requires its programmes and policies to be carried out, which costs money as it requires people to deliver those services.
“It is not possible to have one’s cake and eat it,” Watler said, explaining that it is the duty of the public sector is to deliver the services and programmes the government of the day wishes to implement – without the people services cannot be delivered in the way the community would expect. “No government can function properly if it cripples itself by cutting the people who deliver its services,” the CICSA President  added.
The difficulty now faced by the civil service was spelt out in the latest directive from the elected arm of government. The administrative arm has been asked to not only cut operational costs further but to work out how to cuts its own HR costs by more than 8% for the next budget, which will be delivered to the Legislative Assembly later this month.
In a memo to senior staff Deputy Governor Donovan Ebanks asked civil servants for their proposals on achieving this 8% HR cost reduction, as mandated by the elected arm, and noted that a headcount reduction would be one of the issues which the service must consider.
Watler noted that since the seriousness of the budget deficit was revealed last year, public sector workers have been on a roller coaster with constant uncertainty over what will happen to their salaries, their health cover, their pensions and even their jobs. Despite this, Watler said they had risen to the challenge to make significant operational cuts in this budget year, even when many departments have been functioning well below their optimum staffing levels.
“Regardless of the uncertainty, and even though morale is far from its peak, civil servants have still continued to do their very best to deliver government services as professionally as possible. They know that there has to be cuts and they are prepared to do all they can, but at the endof the day the question that has to be asked now is —  what do the people want us to cut?” Watler said.

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NDC sends anti-alcohol message to young people

NDC sends anti-alcohol message to young people

| 06/04/2010 | 2 Comments

(CNS): The use of alcohol by young people is a significant problem in the Cayman Islands the National Drug Council (NDC) has said as it launches a campaign to raise awareness about underage drinking during Alcohol Awareness Month. According to the Cayman Islands Student Drug Use Survey (CISDUS) in 2006 44% of those who reported drinking admitted having their first drink between the ages of 6 and 11. The survey also suggests that a third of middle school students get their alcohol from their own parents so the battle to beat under age drinking needs to start in the home.

As the campaign got under way Executive Director of the National Drug Council, Joan West-Dacres said that she is particularly concerned about young people when it comes to alcohol. “We have many fine young people, but when we see statistics showing: out of 2500 students between the ages of 11 and 16 more than 1000 admitted to drinking alcohol in the past year and more than 300 were involved in binge or heavy drinking episodes, this calls for action and support of everyone across the community,” she stated.
Calling on parents, elder brothers and sisters, and other adults to discourage young people from drinking West-Dacres said adults must set a good example in drinking habits.
“If you – adults – drink do so in moderation,” she added. The NDC boss saidthat alcohol can contribute to numerous problems with young people from underachievement at school and trouble at home to criminal activity.
Dacres explained that throughout this s month the NDC will be focusing the campaign on young people. There will be a distribution of brochures which focus on alcohol misuse, public service messages pointing to the dangers of drinking  — in particular drinking and driving– will be carried at Hollywood Theatres and on local radio stations that and the NDC will focus all its presentations during the month of April made to young people in the schools on dangers of drinking.
For further information, please contact the NDC at 949-9000, write to us at info.ndc.ky or visit us at www.ndc.ky

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DoE undertakes night time bugs count

DoE undertakes night time bugs count

| 06/04/2010 | 9 Comments

(CNS): Love them or hate them, bugs are an extremely important part of the natural eco-system, and although there are over one million individual species of insects known to science, making them the most diverse creature on earth, very little is known about them. Paradoxically, given their enormous ecological and economic significance, very little is known about the role they play in the natural and built environment. As a result, the Department of the Environment will be spending April counting the aerial (ones that fly about) insects found in Grand Cayman’s night-time skies to shed some light on the life of bugs in our own environment.

According to this month’s edition of the DoE newsletter Flicker, scientists estimate that some six to ten million species of creepy crawlies remain to be discovered and described, which means the DoE survey could turn up some unexpected and hitherto unknown bugs.
The project will be conducted using UV light traps supplied by the Mosquito Research and Control Unit to capture insects from different habitats. The role of insects in the ecology of other key species will also be examined. Urban, natural and intermediate sites will be compared in order to find out how habitat modification and vegetation type influence insect populations.
“With so little known about local insects, the exciting possibility always remains that new species will be discovered. The project is scheduled for completion by late April, and the results will be published in an upcoming edition of Flicker,” the DoE said.
Additionally, in support of the previous work of Paul Watler of the National Trust for the Cayman Islands, traps are being deployed at established bat survey locations to examine interactions between the species.

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More charges in kidnapping

More charges in kidnapping

| 06/04/2010 | 0 Comments

(CNS): The police have now charged a total of four people in connection to the kidnapping of a male victim last month. Sywell Allan Kelly, a 40-year-old Honduran national, was charged with abduction, keeping in confinement an abducted person, blackmail, threatening violence and assault ABH, while Richard Robert Hurlston (32), a Caymanian, was charged with abduction, keeping in confinement an abducted person and blackmail, when the two men appeared in court this afternoon (Tuesday 6 April).  These two men join Wespie Mullings-Ramon (36) and Charles Feliz Saunders-Webster (28), both Honduran nationals, who were charged in court with similar abduction offences on Monday 29 March.

In the first kidnapping and ransom case to ever occur in the Cayman Islands, the parents of the victim reported to police that they received a phone call on Thursday, 18 March, from a man claiming to have taken their son hostage and demanding a ransom of hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure his release. The parents were told by the kidnappers that they would kill the victim if they contacted the police. However, a few days later the victim managed to escape.
Police then arrested Mullings-Ramon at about 1:00 pm on Saturday, 20 March, at Owen Roberts International Airport as he attempted to flee the country. On 23 March, Saunders-Webster was also arrested at the airport as he too tried to flee the Cayman Islands. On 29 March, Kelly was arrested at the Elgin Road Immigration office, while Hurlston was arrested during a police operation in George Town on Tuesday 30 March. The RCIPS said that enquiries into the kidnapping continue.

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UK should pay for T&C enquiry says committee

UK should pay for T&C enquiry says committee

| 06/04/2010 | 21 Comments

(CNS): The UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee has said that the UK government should be funding the probe into corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands as it bears some responsibility for what happened in the territory. In a new report the committee said it had grave concerns about the territory’s future and its precarious financial situation. Chair of the Committee, Mike Gapes (left), warned that the British Government had to pay for the current investigation otherwise it would undermine its own credibility in its use of reserved powers, not just in TCI but in the other Overseas Territories as well.

Gape criticised the amount of time the investigation was taking and warned that while the UK’s overriding goal had to be to restore democracy, unless theinvestigation was concluded properly there could be little hope of free and fair elections by July 2011.
"It is essential that the issues identified by us in our 2008 report and by the Commission of Inquiry are resolved to secure the well-being of the territory, or there may be a loss in public confidence,” Gape stated. "The overriding aim of the current British administration of the TCI must be to restore democratic self-government as soon as purging of the corrupt and dysfunctional political system has been completed and entrenched. It has already been twelve months since the Commission’s interim report and still no decisive action has been taken against those suspected of corruption.”
The chair said the idea that direct rule could end in July 2011 was unrealistic since, if elections were to go ahead on that timetable, there was a real danger that politicians facing serious allegations of corruption could liquidate their assets and put funds beyond the reach of the authorities or seek to use bribery and intimidation to engineer a return to office.
“The Government should reassure the people of the TCI that a new constitution will not be put in place, nor elections held, until there is absolute confidence that the necessary reforms have been fully embedded,” Gape added.
He said the committee was concerned that the UK Government has failed to adequately fund the Special Investigation and Prosecution Team (SIPT), which was presently relying on money from the already overstretched TCI government. Gape said the SIPT was taking funds that are desperately needed for healthcare and policing and that the argument that the UK should not pay was flawed.
“The UK Government was culpable in allowing a culture of systemic corruption to develop in the TCI unchecked, and now that it is officially intervening it has a responsibility to follow through with the required financial commitment,” Gape said.  “It is unreasonable to expect the people of the TCI to fund investigations and prosecutions relating to corruption for which they were not responsible. The UK Government must fully fund the SIPT or risk undermining its own credibility in its use of reserved powers in not just the TCI but in the other Overseas Territories."
The report states that the lack of UK funding has prevented the Special Prosecutor from fully investigating the allegations raised during the 2008–09 enquiries.  The committee said that twelve months have past since Sir Robin Auld produced his interim report but no decisive action has been taken to proceed against the politicians and others suspected of serious corruption.
“The longer this damaging delay continues, the greater the risk that the moves to eradicate corruption from public life in TCI may founder,” the committee stated, adding that the UK government was being naive in relation to the potential financial pressures likely to be faced by future governments in the TCI, and the capacity of wrongdoers to impede and frustrate the SIPT’s investigations.

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Treaty to be revised to fight tax evasion

Treaty to be revised to fight tax evasion

| 06/04/2010 | 1 Comment

(Bloomberg): The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said it agreed with European nations to modify a treaty designed to combat global tax evasion. The revision of the so-called Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters aims to “align the convention to the international standard on information exchange for tax purposes by allowing for the exchange of bank information,” the Council of Europe, representing 47 countries from Germany to the U.K., said in a statement today. The treaty will be signed at an OECD meeting on May 27-28 in Paris.

“The convention is a unique instrument to counteract international tax avoidance and evasion,” OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said in the statement. “The OECD and the Council of Europe have agreed to improve international cooperation to combat tax evasion and the standards set by the convention are being updated to reflect this new consensus.”
 

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Hedge funds head towards pre-crisis levels

Hedge funds head towards pre-crisis levels

| 06/04/2010 | 0 Comments

(Business week): Global hedge fund assets may return to the pre-financial crisis peak of almost $2 trillion by year- end, boosted by investment profits and capital inflows, according to a Credit Suisse Group AG survey of investors. Industry assets may grow 25 percent from the $1.6 trillion at the end of 2009, according to the annual survey published today. The Zurich-based lender polled about 600 institutional investors worldwide with about $1 trillion of hedge fund assets between them, or above 60 percent of the industry total. Hedge funds posted the strongest annual return in a decade last year, helping to reverse capital outflows in the second half of 2009.

Assets are expected to expand even as investors take more time to make allocation decisions, demand more transparency and cut the number of holdings, the survey found. Asia-Pacific will likely be the biggest beneficiary among all geographies, with 61 percent of investors indicating they are increasing or considering raising their allocations to managers focused on the region, the survey said.
 

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