Archive for May, 2012
Arch beats out women nominees for 2012 YCLA
(CNS): Currently General Manager of National Concrete, 36-year-old Garth Arch received the Young Cayman Leadership Award 2012 on Saturday. The only man nominated this year, Arch beat Dara Flowers Burke, Casandra Morris, Orchid Morrison and Samantha Widmer. Taking the title from the 2011 winner, Natalie Urquhart, he joins a growing list of Caymanians who have spent a year as a local role model inspiring young people. As the chair of the Children and Youth Services (CAYS) board, Arch is already involved with troubled youth, and as the first a Honorary Consul of Spain in Cayman, he developed a new scholarship for young Caymanians to study in that country.
Later this year Arch plans to join the family business, where he will follow in his father’s footsteps as Managing Director of Arch and Godfrey. Aside from CAYS, Arch is Chairman of the Trade and Business Licensing Board, Chairman of the Planning Committee for the Governor’s Award for Design and Construction Excellence, and immediate Past-President of the Cayman Society of Architects, Surveyors and Engineers (CASE). He is also a member of the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman Sunrise and a member of First Baptist Church, so adding this latest commitment to his list could make 2012 a busy year for the qualified civil engineer.
Arch received his award at the annual YCLA gala at the Ritz Carlton on Saturday evening “It’s a tremendous honour. I feel humbled to receive the award,” said Arch, as he received his award. “I want to use YCLA as a platform to reach out to as many of the young people in this country as I can.”
Legal training for law school graduates based on merit
(CNS Business): The Cayman Islands Law Society is committed to ensuring that as many Caymanian students as possible are given the opportunity to qualify as attorneys-at-law, according to its president, Charles Jennings. At a time when, due to the global recession, it is getting harder for law graduates in England to obtain training contracts with law firms, Cayman firms actually maintained, and in some cases even increased, the number of positions on offer, he noted. Responding to the attorney general’s recent speech in the Legislative Assembly calling for members of the islands’ legal fraternity to face their moral obligation to train the next generation of lawyers, Jennings pointed out that obtaining Articles is not a right for law graduates but is earned on merit and is subject to supply and demand. Read more on CNS Business
CINICO clarifies criteria for home health care cover
(CNS): The government owned health insurance company has said that it has received a number of queries over its Home Health Care (HHC) benefit and has recognised that members may have some misconceptions over the exact extent of this benefit. To get insurance cover for home health care it says applicants must have approval from the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), state their diagnosis, certify that the home car is in place of hospital confinement and state detail he extent of the home treatment. To be eligible for the benefit CINICO members must complete an application form.
CINICO stated that the home cover was not available to members on the SHIC Plans which include affordable, challenger and silver. The insurance company said that benefits have not changed but continue to be available to persons who qualify and are covered under the Civil Servants, Pensioners, Seafarers and Veterans as well as persons covered under the Indigent Plans.
CINICO is asking people with any questions about the plans to contact the office or visit the CINICO website at www.cinico.ky
Clarifying the criteria for home health care benefits for those wishing to apply CINICO listed the criteria as follows:
1. It must be under a formal written plan made by the patient’s attending Physician and approved by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) which is reviewed at least every 180 days.
2. It must state the diagnosis
3. It must certify that the Home Health Care is in place of hospital confinement
4. It must specify the type and extent of Home Health Care required for the treatment of the patient.” – Summary Plan Document 2008
Dynamite request in question
CNS): As pressure mounts around the premier to step aside while he remains the subject of three police investigations, a memo he sent to the collector of customs requesting the release of a shipment of dynamite has raised questions over whether or not it is a request or a direction. Although McKeeva Bush has claimed that the letter was nothing more than an effort to see if he could assist a friend, it forms part of one of the three police investigations into Bush. The opposition says that, coming from the premier, such a request could be interpreted as abuse of office as it reads more like a demand than a request.
Bush sent the memo to Collector of Customs Carlon Powery after receiving a request from the importer to assist in releasing a shipment of dynamite which was imported without the necessary licensing. A minister of finance, the premier also has responsibility for the customs department, and Powery therefore answers directly to Bush.
Despite the dangerous materials involved, the importers appear to consider their failure to secure the proper license as merely an oversight which the premier could resolve for them. In a letter to the premier, Suresh Prasad, the director of Midlands Acres (the importers of the explosives) tells Bush that although the quarrying firm normally uses Precision Drilling to do their blasting, they decided to by-pass the firm for a large job they had secured. As a result, the firm failed to clear the importation of the explosives with the National Roads Authority (NRA) and just went ahead and shipped in the dangerous materials.
In the letter dated Sunday 4 March, Prasad points to the investment and jobs that may be lost as he asks the premier to consider the problem and offer assistance.
On 7 March Bush sent a short memo to the collector of customs, copied to the director of the NRA, asking him to release the shipment, which was reportedly 32 tonnes of dynamite, and for his “request to be expedited” because the company was “desperately in need”.
Ezzard Miller has stated that, given the style and personality of the premier as well as the language used and the culture created by the premier in his ministry, the civil servant would have been in no doubt that this was more than a request for them to consider but a demand. Miller said the request was “equivalent to an order” and added that even if it was to be considered merely as a request and not a demand, it was a request to ask a senior civil servant to break the law.
“The premier has in fact given a written, what he calls a request, but we all know given the modus operandi, the personality, the culture and the character of the premier, the request is equivalent to an order to a department head to consider breaking the law,” he said, adding that this sort of thing should be dealt with via the administrative arm of government but if this was how Bush was running his portfolio then it was “very troubling”.
Bush has denied that his letter to Powery represented political interference and has described it as an effort to help a friend. “I have done nothing illegal,” the premier has stated on numerous occasions following the revelations that he is the subject of three separate police probes. He has accused the Cayman Islands governor and the bureaucrats in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of conspiring against him and the opposition leader of fuelling the flames in a bid for power.
See Bush’s memo and the letter of request sent to Bush by Suresh Prasad.
Battered wives must make their own decision to leave
(CNS): As distressing as it is to see women put up with being abused by their husbands and partners, it is the role of those who care for them when they run from their abusers to help them get on with their lives in a non-judgmental way. Battered women must make their owndecision to leave their abuser and this means, on average, running away from their husband or partner seven times before they finally see the light, according to Cayman Islands Crisis Centre Director Ania Milanowska-Sedgley. She said that with domestic violence one thing was sure – it always got worse, not better, until the victim left for good.
Speaking on the subject of domestic violence at last week’s Nurses Conference held at the Marriott Beach Resort, Milanowska-Sedgley said that globally, one in four women are either beaten or forced into sex by an abuser, who is often a member of their own family. 85 per cent of domestic violence victims are women and every day three women are murdered in America by either their husband or partner.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the US, beating all other causes, such as car accidents and muggings, combined. 25 to 45 per cent of women who are abused are pregnant at the time of the abuse and domestic violence costs America US$5.8 billion annually, with US$1.4 billion of that being spent directly on medical costs.
People who were abused come from all sorts of backgrounds, she said. They were all ages, ethnicities and economic backgrounds and all had suffered at the hands of an abuser who was looking for power over them. Milanowska-Sedgley outlined the types of abuse that was considered domestic violence and this not only included physical abuse but also sexual, emotional, psychological and financial.
She said that abusers often criticized the victim in public, put them down and insulted them to lower their self-esteem. Often they would appear gentle and kind to their victim in public and save the abuse for when they got home. They may withhold finances from their partner or wife or restrict access to family and friends in anotherway of abusing their victims, she explained. Women were made to feel that they had no choice in this type of activity and that the abuser had total control over their lives.
Milanowska-Sedgley outlined many reasons that abused women gave to validate why they had not left the abusive relationship, and even though it was hard to bear witnessing the suffering that the women had endured, she said it was important for those who cared for such women to allow them to make their own decisions as to when they would finally leave their partner or husband.
Women might say that they feared the unknown if they left their partner, that becoming a single parent was too much to bear, that their husband or partner promised they would reform and was also considerate after the abuse. She went on to say that women sometimes thought their husband was sick and it was their duty to help him, as a wife. A lack of self-esteem sometimes prevented women from leaving, as did a lack of financial support without their partner or husband. Some women believed that they would be perceived as failures by society or their families if they left their husbands. Some women, particularly ex-patriots, kept the abuse from their families back home and pretended that it did not exist for fear of bringing shame on their families.
Some women had religious beliefs that prevented them from leaving their abuser, thinking it was all part of “God’s plan”.
The Cayman Islands Crisis Centre has room for 18 abused women and they are never turned away, even if they have left their partners multiple times to be helped at the Centre.
“Women are never turned away because seeing them repeatedly means they are one step closer to being free from the abuse,” Milanowska-Sedgley said. “It takes women on average seven times to leave their husband or partner before they leave him for good … Abuse only gets worse if the victim does not do something about it.”
While the Crisis Centre was a female-only refuge, she said that men in Cayman were also abused by their partners or wives and even though men did call the centrefor advice, there was not a place of refuge on island for them to go to. Milanowska-Sedgley acknowledged that there was little support for men in this regard.
Bush blames assistant
(CNS): The Cayman Islands premier has said that the letter sent to developer Stan Thomas in October 2004 demanding a payment of $350,000 to settle anoutstanding bill in connection with the re-zoning of land on the West Bay Road was a mistake on the part of his political assistant, Richard Parchment. McKeeva Bush claims that a second letter was sent later that same day clarifying that the money was for real estate services and not re-zoning. Under pressure to explain what the now notorious letter to Thomas was all about, Bush said he had not seen the correspondence before it was sent to Thomas by his assistant, who had used his electronic signature. (Photo Dennie Warren Jr)
The letter to Thomas forms part of one of three investigations that surround the premier in relation to financial irregularities and his involvement in an illegal shipment of dynamite.
Following the emergence of a number of documents, which were originally leaked to the Caymanian Compass, Bush says he had assisted in the sale of the land that Thomas had purchased from the previous owner Gil Freytag and he was seeking money from Thomas because he acted as a buyer’s agent.
Bush has denied writing or signing the letter and has blamed Parchment for the choice of words, claiming his political assistant wrote the letter and put Bush’s digitalised signature on it and then sent it to Thomas.
The premier, who was leader of government business at the time, has said he was out of the office but had spoken with Parchment over the phone and asked him to send a bill for the outstanding amount owed, which was $350,000 from an original bill of three-quarters of a million dollars.
Bush says that when he came back to the office and saw the correspondence that Parchment had sent, he “immediately saw the implication of the first letter” and asked Parchment to send another one that, he said, clarified that the money for “the West Bay Seven Mile Beach purchase transaction is for consulting fees for work carried out and advice given by Windsor Development Corporation,” and indicated that Windsor Development, the real estate firm owned by Bush’s wife and which he is a director, was not involved in the zoning.
Parchment has reportedly confirmed Bush’s description of events to the police but there is still a question over when the letters were sent. The correspondence referring to the zoning is dated 7 October but the ministry fax machine from which the letter was sent has time stamped the document on 15 October, while the second letter also dated 7 October and reportedly sent from the same machine on the same day has no fax time stamp. Parchment has stated, however, that both letters were sent on the 7 October.
An April letter that sets out the original bill, which was also leaked to the local newspaper and appears also to have been in a legal bundle, sets out the full invoice for US$750,000, which is described as a real estate commission. The sale on the land in question was settled in February 2004, but according to another witness statement given to the police by real estate agent Brian White, the deal between Gil Freytag and Thomas had originally been signed in May 2003 for an agreed price of $28 million but was delayed for a number of reasons and eventually settled, he believed, in late January 2004 and registered in February.
Bush has not said when it was that he first met Thomas but he says that he did meet the developer in Las Vegas in February after the sale was completed to look at the Four Seasons hotel, the brand Thomas was considering for the resort he proposed to build on the West Ray Road land. They were also discussing the issue of gaming because at the time Bush was supporting the introduction of casinos and believed Thomas' proposed project was a great opportunity for the Cayman Islands.
Bush states that it was while he was in Vegas that Thomas gave him a $20,000 cash deposit on the commission, which the premier says was owed to Windsor Development. Thomas then made as second payment of US$355,000 by wire transfer leaving a balance of US$350,000, which the premier said was never paid.
The premier claims that the payments were legitimate real estate transactions for his role in brokering the deal, even though he was doing so while leader of government business and that by acting for the buyer rather than the seller, Bush assisted in helping Thomas to avoid paying stamp duty on the commission.
Although Bush has denied that the money was for re-zoning, despite the content of the first letter, he has not explained why the re-zoning discussion was left off the Cabinet agenda for several months at his request.
See Wight’s witness statement and the correspondence between Bush and Thomas below
Home invaders strike in early hours
(CNS): Police have now confirmed that they are investigating an aggravated burglary reported to have taken place around 3.00am on 8 May in Northward Road, Bodden Town. An RCIPS spokeperson said that two men broke into a house where they held and threatened the male victim and demanded cash before making off from the scene. Although police did not say if the intruders were armed, other sources tell CNS that the victim was a man in his 60's whom the suspects assaulted while he was sleeping in his bed in order to wake him up and ask for the cash.
Police said that enquiries are ongoing into the home invasion and anyone with information is asked to call Bodden Town police station on 947-2220 or crimestoppers on 800 8477 (TIPS)
Injured manstill missing
(CNS): Update Monday 14 May — The RCIPS are still trying to find Aaron McLaughlin because he is injured and refusing medical attention. However, police will not confirm if they believe that the 20-year-old man has been shot. A spokesperson for the police said there are no reports that he was involved in committing any crimes but, from what is known so far, it appears as if he may have been the victim of a crime and they want him to come forward. "He is doing his best to avoid the police and, as such, we are not in a position to get an account from him as to exactly what has happened to him," the RCIPS police spokesperson said Monday.
"We are concerned about his welfare and would ask anyone who knowswhere he is to contact the police on 949-4222. McLaughlin is 5’11” in height, brown complexion and around 150lbs.
At around 5pm Thursday, 10 May, police received a report that he had been injured in an incident which had occurred in the early hours of the morning. McLaughlin, who is known to frequent the George Town and Prospect areas, has been in touch with family via the telephone. However, it is not clear at this stage how serious his injuries are or if he has sought medical attention. Officers are appealing for the assistance of the public in their efforts to trace this man urgently.
Anyone with information should call George Town police station on 949-4222.
Robotics team places at international tournament
(CNS): Cayman Prep High School’s robotics team made a very respectable showing last weekend at the First Lego League World Invitational tournament. The Cyber Rays were up against a field of 64 teams in Lakeland, FL, where the competition included 5 robot runs, technical evaluation, project presentation, and Core Values interviews. Josh Martin, Michael Boucher, Nick Crawshaw, Ryan Kirkaldy, Drew Milgate, Samantha Smellie and Aideen Teeling earned 2nd overall in the Presentation Award for Effective Communication. The award, placed them at the top of the world rankings and gained international publicity the islands, the team’s mentor said.
Head coach Alison Smith, mentors David Kirkaldy and Jeff Boucher, parents and Sheila Purdom also went along to support the team. Boucher said the Lego League provides incredible opportunities for the young team
“This is more than learning robotics. These kids learn to think like scientists and engineers, while building interpersonal and presentation skills, and learning about team dynamics, research and time management, fairness and honesty, and over an event like the FLL World Invitational, performing well under immense pressure," he added.
Head Coach Allison Smith added that even if the children do not pursue engineering and science, they have learned to strive for excellence in all that they accomplish.
"We were never sure how far we would get as a rookie team but we were determined to do our best. I am happy to say that doing our best has proven that we are capable of international success. I am very proud of the growth and development that each team member has demonstrated throughout the season. What we learn will always be more important to us that what we win," she said.
The coaches and mentors said the weekend’s event was the culmination of a “real dream season for the rookie team from Cayman” with important wins at the qualifying event in January, and at the regionals. It was at the Florida State Championship where the team qualified for the World Invitational event. On every trip the team has promoted the CaymanIslands with prominent display of our flag in all events and handing out Cayman Islands trading pins kindly provided by the Department of Tourism.
The team is already looking forward to the next season of FLL robotics competition which starts in the fall school term and will be centred around the theme of senior citizens entitles "Senior Solutions. Independent. Engaged. Connected."
Referendum bill passed
(CNS): The referendum law was passed on Thursday night, despite the fact that the deputy premier, a Cabinet member, voted against it. The government bill passed without any of the changes proposed by the opposition members. In order for the vote to carry some 7,550 people will need to go to the polls and vote ‘yes ‘on 18 July. Although this is a government and not a people-initiated poll, the UDP administration has opted for the higher threshold for the question to carry. This means 50 per cent of the electorate plus one vote and not a majority of voters who turn out will be required in order to change the country’s voting system, presenting an uphill, if not impossible, battle for the supporters of one man, one vote.
Although a people-initiated referendum would have also required fifty percent of the electorate plus one vote for it to pass, the opposition leader pointed out that under those circumstances government would have been obligated to take a neutral position. At the very least, it would not have been able to use the full weight of the government machinery and resources to campaign full on against the proposal, he observed.
Alden McLaughlin also raised concerns that many civil servants are now fearful about going to vote since, given the circumstances set by government, the only people who need to go to the polls are those voting ‘Yes’, which could leave them exposed to intimidation. McLaughlin said that despite reassurances from Deputy Governor Franz Manderson, many civil servants are not convinced that they are free to vote their conscience and still fear reprisals, no matter what Manderson has said.
Following a full day’s proceedings in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday to debate the law to facilitate the referendum on one member, one vote and single member constituencies, government refused to accept any changes requested by the opposition or the independent member.
“The government has now completely hi-jacked this process and will be placing its full weight and resources against the question to make sure it fails,” McLaughlin said in the wake of the debate. By emphatically stating its position against one man, one vote and having “polarized the environment”, McLaughlin said things have turned out very differently from what should have been a people’s poll.
He said that Bush had made it virtually impossible for the 'yes' vote to carry. However, the opposition leader said that, regardless of the odds now being well and truly stacked against it, the campaign would go on and no one was giving up. The major battle, he said, would be to try and persuade civil servants to go out and vote, despite what he said was a very real fear that they would suffer the consequences of doing so.
McLaughlin warned that some 1,900 more people would need to come out and vote in this national poll than in Cayman’s very first referendum for the constitution.
“It is important to recognise exactly what Mckeeva Bush has done with this process,” McLaughlin said. “He has done all he can to ensure its failure.”
During the debate in the House, Ezzard Miller also raised his concerns but was optimistic that at least the day had been declared a holiday. He said that by setting the threshold so high, Bush was punishing the people that cared about the political process and who cared about democracy.
By having a majority of electors needed to past the vote and not a majority of turn out, ‘no’ voters could stay home as their vote was now irrelevant, he said. The only thing that would count now was the 8,000 yes voters that were needed, he said as he urged the people to make history by carrying the vote regardless of government’s efforts to prevent the introduction of one man, one vote.
“Be proud to brag to your children and grandchildren that you were one of the 8,000,” Miller said as he called on every registered voter to come out and vote yes.
During the presentation of the bill, Bush denied the accusations about the vote be rigged against a ‘yes’ vote and said government had made it "as fair as possible,” as he launched into a tirade against the principle of single member constituencies.