Archive for March 23rd, 2011
Crew and damaged ship reverse home safely
(CNS): Update Wednesday 7:10am – The rescued vessel, El Tigre, escorted by the Joint Marine Unit vessel, Niven D, returned to Grand Cayman last night (Tuesday, 22 March), police say. The boat and crew arrived at the North Sound Launch Ramp, Newlands around 10.30 pm. Police said the four man crew of the El Tigre were all safe and well, despite having to reverse their boat around 38 miles back to Grand Cayman while pumping water to keep it afloat. The crew first reported taking on water around 11.00 am yesterday. The owner of the boat arranged for two pumps to be transported to the boat by helicopter and then contacted the police. (Photo Dennie Warren Jr)
The Niven D was deployed to rendezvous with the boat, which was making its way slowly back to Grand Cayman using the pumps dropped onto the boat by Cayman Islands Helicopters to keep the vessel afloat.
Shortly after 5.00 pm Tuesday Niven D came up alongside the El Tigre around 30 miles from shore. A private vesselfrom Harbour House Marina also went to the location and assisted with pumping water. All three vessels travelled back to Grand Cayman Tuesday evening.
CS mindset slow to change
(CNS): The entire mindset of the civil service is having to change to accommodate the Public Management and Finance Law but it is a slow process and the Cayman Islands will have to be patient, according to speakers at the UCCI’s conference last week on Leadership, Governance and Empowerment in the Caribbean. The shift from cash-based to accruals-based accounting and the need for civil servants to actually show the goods and services that they are receiving for their money has required a completely new culture of thinking, Kurt Tibbetts, the former leader of government business and opposition member for George Town, said during a presentation on the PMFL
“Under the old system there was no incentive for civil servants to save,” he said. “They simply used up their allocation before the end of the fiscal year, whether the expenditure was necessary or not.
“Deficient budgets were a common affair. Bills lay hidden in drawers only to reappear months later and the expenditure was rubber stamped by Finance Committee after the event,” he added.
Tibbetts said many of those in government at the time were crying out for change, hence the arrival of the Public Management and Finance Law (2005), which has been subsequently amended, most recently in 2010. However, the key to the success of this law was in its operation and while the Public Management and Finance Law was enacted, sister legislation that would speak to the administration of the law was not.
“The lag time between these two pieces of law has caused many functions of the system to be disjointed,” Tibbetts said. “The human resources side needed to be prepared and understood. This was very important, but it fell by the wayside.”
Tibbetts also said that he had wanted performance-based remuneration to be installed in the civil service at the time the legislation was put in place. “We have not reached a stage whereby civil servants’ remuneration is performance-based and the original concept for this has been watered down in the law,” he noted.
The idea of performance-based rewards had excited Tibbetts because he said it would have produced a competitive spirit among peers and colleagues. “It wasn’t about not paying people. You wouldn’t want them to outshine you!” he said. He went on to say that this new performance-based system was not just about pay but about attitude in the job place as well.
“We wanted the attitude to change. It would not be good enough to say: ’I’m a civil servant and I just need to turn up for work and do no more thannecessary to keep my job’,” he said.
Decentralising the human resources side of the civil service was another important move to keep in check what Tibbetts described as “the alarming growth of personnel in the civil service”.
He talked of the new paradigm shift which no longer tolerated simply hiring an individual for a specific task when there was already sufficient personnel to deal with the task. I’m satisfied that has, or is, changing now and has done so for some time,” he confirmed.
The explosion in numbers of the civil service has caused what Tibbetts termed “a very serious problem”, especially with operating expenditure by government taking up such a large proportion of its overall budget, at around 50 per cent. “It’s difficult to fire people,” he said. “I applaud the deputy governor for his efforts that are taking place now.”
Tibbetts ended his session by saying that it was not all bad and anything was better than the old system of accounting.
“I think it may have been a bit over ambitious to introduce the entire law comprehensively and it should have maybe been introduced in phases,” he conceded. “The success of the system depends on those who work in it and the downturn in the economy has certainly been an eye opener for us all. Everyone is now interested in spending only what they have to.”
Deputy Governor Donovan Ebanks said he was convinced that Cayman was now on the right track but did not feel the civil service was as far along as it ought to be in properly adopting the Public Management and Finance Law.
“We did not strike the right balance between aspirations and resources,” he explained. “It’s not just about the number of bodies we have; it’s about monitoring the mechanics of the system and IT capabilities.”
Ebanks said that there was currently an environment of a willingness within the civil service to look at the progress so far and there have been recent meetings to address issues with the law.
Cayfest photo contest entries on show at libraries
(CNS): Cayman’s public libraries will become venues for artistic expression between this week when the Cayman National Cultural Foundation (CNCF), entries in the 2011 Cayfest Photography competition will be on display at public libraries across the Islands. The exhibit opens at 7 pm on 24 March in the George Town Public Library, moving to West Bay’s Emily ’Teacher’ Redley Library on Monday, 4 April. It then travels east for respective showings on 11 and 14 April at the East End and North Side public libraries.Thereafter, the venue will be the Bodden Town Library from 18 – 20 April, followed by the Little Cayman Trust House between 26 and 27 April. The exhibit’s final showing is scheduled for 28 – 30 April at the Cayman Brac Library.
“It’s a pleasure to partner with the Cultural Foundation in this Cayfest initiative,” said Cayman Islands Public Library Services ActingDirector Juliet Lawson. “The competition presents an excellent opportunity for local photographers to display their work and I encourage everyone to visit their neighbourhood library to view the images.”