Budget dominates deputy governor’s meetings
(CNS): According to documents released by the deputy governor’s office recent meetings since July between Franz Manderson and senior public officials were dominated by the outstanding budget. According to the most recent released minutes from the 13 August meeting which took place one month ago no other issues were discussed. Back on 31 July the budget was again the only point of discussion including the possibility of cutting the running costs of the new government building. On 6 August however the civil service bosses found time to discuss a number of other issues including the auditor general’s report on the use of fuel cards by public servants.
They also spoke about the proposal for a register of interests for civil servants the use of the GAB in a hurricane, a dress code for civil servants, and the CNCF cultural day as well as the budget
See minutes below from July and August meetings
Category: Politics
Either the minutes were incomplete or poorly written, or the meetings are not worth holding. It would seem very little was accomplished at these meetings.
I would urge you all to read these "minutes'…it won't take long I promise.
Astounding lack of substance, decision, progress or anything meaningful or creative.
Just spinning wheels at enormous expense to justify a day at the office. Certainly a stress free existence , even for those who choose to show up between a prayer and adjournment.
Look at who attends the meetings and then you wonder why you can never get responses from some of them!
no disrespect to followers of faith, but this appears to be more like a prayer group than anything else. . .?
Why? Because each set of Minutes mentions "prayer" once? That is what people of faith do before anything else when faced with difficult or challenging situations – they pray. It doesn't detract one iota from the performance of their functions and does not deserve any adverse comment.
Could they not pray before they go into the meeting and keep it out of official business? Must be hard to be an atheist and conduct public business when everything starts with a mini-prayer group.
Would it make you happier if they left it out of the minutes?
I am sure you can opt out if you are an atheist. Did anyone at the meeting object?
Have some respect.
Praying seems to be the Govt's mantra, but as far as I can see it has got the current and past Govt's absolutely nowhere in terms of sorting out our state of affiars. So yes, it should be left out of official business so that the real issues can be addressed.
"If my people, who are called by my name, will (1) humble themselves and (2) pray and (3) seek my face and (4) turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land". 2 Chron. 7:14.
"If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable". Prov. 28:9.
Leaving God out of our business (as opposed to putting on public displays of piety) has got us where we are today – rising crime, increasing poverty, social division and economic recession.
I just saw this post anon thurs, and it interested me because it rang so many bells. Many years ago, I was a consultant to the Education dept on certain things and I was perplexed because I kept being taken off tasks I was paid to do to do things not in my contract. One had to do with a certain celebration of, shall we say, education in the Cayman Islands. I don't want to be any more precise than that. The celebration was headed up by a lady who clearly had no admin skills, no personnel skills, and few intellectual skills, no idea to even think about where to begin to get this project underway. I cannot imagine why she was in any position of importance in the education system but maybe I missed something. She formed a task force to get the celebration week underway and delegated ( ie aggressively ordered) certain people to do certain things. Her teamwere teachers and they clearly resented her for giving them jobs to do that she should have been doing herself because she had the time and they did not. If they asked questions, she bullied and humiliated them. I was staggered and wondered if this was just the Cayman way and I was a naive foreigner. BUT, there was one part of the whole thing that she was absolutely in control of. The church service that had to kick off the whole thing one Sunday afternoon and other services during the week of the celebration in the different districts. We spent hours and hours and hours on this. She had nothing to offer in the way of celebrating education in the Cayman Islands but she was on the ball at organising services in the districts. I was appalled. There is a positive comment I must make however. The task force she had asembled of teachers, Caymanian and non Caymanian was very impressive and they did all her work for her and got nothing but contempt in return from her. During my relatively short time in Cayman, I felt the teaching profession had some impressive staff. The Education Department was frightful.
It seems like the only point of the post was to object to having church services.
I didn't see it that way at all although if one is a "churchy" person I suppose one could see it that way. The post is long-winded but I think there are maybe two points the poster was trying to make -ineffective civil servants can cover up their weaknesses by using the Church to show their competence, devoutness and Caymanianess, which still works in Cayman but is wearing off as the younger generation takes its place. And also – more seriously in my view, -the time spent on these church related matters is far in excess of the time spent on matters which are of great weight and importance to Cayman. So long as the churchservice is ok, the rest of whatever is being celebrated, announced, begun etc is minor.
AS a matter of interest, is this person still employed by the civil service…?
I am not the original poster but I am a teacher with many years under the belt and i can safely say this post refers (accurately) to three potential persons in the Education Dept of some years ago. They have all, thanks be to God and the civil service retirement rules, left the civil service.
these are te most useless, meaningless 'minutes' – nothing of substance, no action items to take forward, no progress or tracking…no wonder the civil service is low, beleagured and lazy
if you add up the collective salaries of these senior CS to sit around pushing paper with hardly progressing any matters, its IRRITATING
No value for money here
How many meeting will they have before the decide anything of substance?
Example, i note that they appear to discuss reducing GOAB cost – but have they actually decided anything!!
These minutes only confirm one thing – we have a lot of idiots in the public service who waste a lot of time, full stop.
You are sooooo right.
Meetings taking many hours of the day, then meaningless records called minutes printed over and over to be distributed to massive list of recipients. Followed by no action other than to arrange another meeting to discuss strategies and other meaningless hog wash 'till its time to go home.
Result..Nothing achieved, public money wasted.
Powerful dynamic stuff from our top civil servants with the Financial Secretary and his sidekick McLaughlin absent AGAIN (her for two of them, him for all three). God bless these struggling Cayman Islands.
The people that are missing are the ones who have a lot on their plate. Hey I will be the first to say its fun to pound up on the defenceless civil service, but dont you think the FS had a major matter to deal with over the last month or so with getting a budget approved?
If the FShad been at these waste of time meetings (as many of you have said) then people would be complaining that he was at these meetings instead of getting the budget ready.
Look at who attends the meetings and then compare that to what the private sector are complaining about as a lack of public service.
There may be a correlation.
The major responsibilities of the Financial Secretary were totally done away with in the last Constitution which we have now adopted. It provided a position called Financial Secretary but made it clear he had no real substantive role in our advanced Constitution. It was put there as one of those classic Caymanian deals SOLELY to provide a job and dignity for Mr Ken Jefferson- the incumbent -without any consideration for the fact that it commits us to appoint an FS with nothing to do and a massive salary until we change this Constitution . He has no real powers unlike the FSs of old .So it could certainly be argued there is no point in him attending these meetings because he is an irrelevancy when it comes to the spending of the Minister of Finance who can do what he wants without checking with poor Ken. So please, don't try to tell us the FS (Ken) is so busy with major problems he can't attend meetings. It is simply not true.
Don't they mean the "abuse" of fuel cards!?!?!?!?!
"Dress Code" for civil servants – oh my word – you mean to tell me they probably spent half an hour discussing whether black denim or blue denim jeans were acceptable to wear on a Friday now! Words fail me!
I am willing to guess that the "meat" of the meetings are left out of these "Minutes".
So, I would hope, they are actually covering more critical issues than what we see here.