Range of new government jobs on Cayman Brac
(CNS): Funding has been approved for the Police Marine Unit to have a dedicated patrol vessel on Cayman Brac, the premier announced at a meeting on the island Thursday night. Addressing around 300 Brackers at the civic centre on his first official visit to the Sister Islands as premier, Alden McLaughlin said that this would help improve security for the island and boost employment. He also announced that one of the outcomes following a review of the Cayman Islands Fire Service has been the approval of funding for 26 new officers, including six on Cayman Brac.
Deputy Premier Moses Kirkconnell, who co-hosted the meeting, announced a number of new government jobs on the island that have either been filled or will be in the near future. These included a plumber, a mechanic, a heavy equipment operator, two customs officers, two immigration posts, a road supervisor / asphalt plant operator, a labourer and an electrician.
Referring to coastal works applications for three marinas, he said that one, the Dilbert Marina next to the Alexander Hotel, which appeared to have large support from the 300 Brackers at the meeting, is complete and will be presented to caucus on Monday. The other two are with the Department of Environment, Kirkconnell said, and even though he admitted that he hadn’t looked at the environmental assessmentof the Dilbert Marine by the DoE, he said supported all three applications.
The government has just finished negotiations for 12 ships from the US Coast Guard to spend time in the Cayman Islands for “R and R” and two of those ships will come to Cayman Brac, Kirkconnell said. The ships will be here for four to five days and 120 sailors will come ashore with money to spend, he noted, adding, “We know how to welcome seamen.”
The Department of Tourism will be holding a “global meeting” on Cayman Brac on 23 March, in which 40 DoT representatives from Canada, Europe, the UK, and Western and Central US will be on the island for four days, having local interaction and taking tours, which the deputy premier described as very good exposure.
The PPM’s vision for the multi-purpose building on the Bluff, which was begun under the last government as a hurricane shelter and became known as the “Hurricane Hilton” because of the plans to have private rooms within the shelter, is to turn that into a school. Kirkconnell said that the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility demands that they complete a business case for that. However, since this cannot be completed in time for the next budget, they have decided to put that money into the roads project instead for this year but next year they will allot $500,000 to move this project forward and work with the education department regarding how to actually put in the classrooms to meet international best practices.
The road programme, he said, will continue up Peter’s Cave road and then go all the way down to the west end, in order to reach the maximum number of people.
Category: Politics
This is not creating jobs. This is taking money from people and businesses and setting up a few government funded posts. Why not try to bring some business to the brac. This is all vote buying. PPM at it again expanding government and looking to make country go bust again.
Alden should take the UK's suggestion of privatisation seriously and put the sale of the Brac out to auction.
Boats is boats.
And wotes is wotes…………
………and groats is groats…………..
Solution for the Brac – allow a developer to build a couple of 4-5 stars resorts and Casinos. Change the law to allow gambling on the brac. All of the sudden the flights from grand cayman to brac will be full and in need of upgrade to boeing 737s. Tax the casinos through an annual license and pass on the proceeds to the brac. Retrain many of the Brac's CS employees and social services recepients to take employment in the new developments. All of the sudden the Brac will become self sufficient.
I can't believe so many people like such a naive comment. A five story hotel was approved just a few years ago, but the developer decided not to build. It's not a matter of ALLOWING someone to build a hotel. It's a matter of finding someone who wants to make such a significant investment in the Brac. That is not an easy matter. And most of the social service recipients cannot be trusted with money, they are not really interested in working, their customer service skills are nonexistent……think you can easily get around all of that with training? Don't you think your ideas would have been implemented a long time ago if it was as easy as you think it is?
Or, alternatively, take advantage of the recent proposed marina construction and base the new shipping business the government's actively seeking there. We already have what you're proposing here, minus the gambling provisions. Rather than us here in Grand Cayman trying to monopolize business, we should try and evenly spread it out. Given our maritime history, this would be a chance for those from the Brac to take advantage of this new opportunity rather than the same old. How many goddamn hotels and resorts do we think we need?
Yes the marina deal that will cause more destruction than good. Greed again. This new breed of Brackers need to stop the damned complaining and bad attitudes, change their mentality that the world and 'OleGranCaymans' owes them and follow in the footsteps of their elders who were pioneers, with one exception, but keep their businesses there!
Politicians somehow always manage to swap roles and take up the job as welfare-ticians. They would do anything to retain power. Now here they are talking about cutting taxes for small businesses, but increasing expenditure and at the same time have to meet certain surplus targets. God knows their mathematician must be a magician!
For the Brac, why not use the Firemen as ambulance drivers and first responders? They already have the training. That would ease up the burden on the hospital. Shoot, they could even be District Admin telephone receptionist right from their control room.
Lord, what a mess.
No chile, this is the Briek you talkin.
Do you know the Bracker words for "shame" and "embarrassment"? No? Neither do I.
YOU CAN LOOK AT ALDEN
Mouth and see he is regressing all the PPM is doing is the same thing the did the last time expecting a different result.
WHAT A BUNCH OF CLOWNS.
Bye bye you only have 3years left to screw up these little Islands, bye bye , tata.
More hard earned money being taken by the government and wasted on charity employment for idle Brackers.
"Idle Brackers"? I'll have you know that we are not all lazy bums. I work three jobs during my breaks from college in the US. You act as if the Brac is the only place where people take advantage of government offerings. Personally, I do not believe that anyone should be entitled to government aid, and I do think that it should be stopped. You, however, need to worry about the log in your eye before you worry about the spec in ours.
I agree, most people with negative comments probably have never even been to the Brac, hold your head high and soar above the negativity
Paying for 26 new firemen on regular wages has got to be more cost effective than constantly paying overtime for an equal numbers of existing firemen probably at the top of the wages pay scale.
No it's not! there are liabilities that come with new recruits. Pension, health insurance, these cost lots of money to the tax payers.
Unbelievable!!!…The PPM went to the Brac to add more government jobs…What the hell is going on with this government?
They just don't get it!
People are so ignorant and hypocritical. Everyone complains that the Brac is a "welfare state", yet are disgusted that the Brac is finally getting attention from the government. The truth is that the Brac is stuck in a loop: Not enough jobs = less mony circulating on the island = private businesses cannot afford to hire as many people. By providing jobs on the Brac, the government is breaking the loop. More jobs mean that there will be more money circulating throughout the island, which will benefit everyone on the Brac. It seems like no one here ever thinks about the domino effect these things have. Most of you are short sighted sheeps who do nothing but echo some other ignorant person.
Here is where I'll digress. I do not believe that we need six more firemen. I think we have enough professional dominoes players as it is.
Where the XxxX is the Queen? Shit our government is out of control and is out to screw this country's environment! What was the purpose of passing the NCL?
Why on earth would there need to be six additional fire fighters on an island less populated than Grand Cayman? How about our ambulance technicians and paramedics? They are always understaffed and get far more calls than the fire service. Get the priorities straight!
The only reason that more positions have opened up on the fire service is because of this business going on with the dump, and the fire fighters have been in the spot light lately.
We rely on the ambulance service so much as an island and they are constantly neglected!
Recruit voluntary fire fighters, they can be paid per jobs they do. Most of these guys havre full time jobs, but will come out to fight fires.
Its like the army reserves, they only partisipate when called.
Well at least there is a cruise ship making a regular call. Or at least, this year is the trial run for putting the Brac on a permanent schedule. Hope the folks over there are welcomeing the visitors.
oh yeah, watch my right hand with 5 jobs for Caymanians …don't look at my left hand though cause there is 500 work permits for foreigners there.
The PPM doing what it does best, waste, waste and more waste. Which ironic when the one thing they are not doing anything about is the dump.
Another day in wonderland
Built the juvenile detention center over there (and perhaps relocate the entire prison). Win/win for everyone! Cayman Airways has full flights with visiting family members, Brackers have jobs for admin work, kitchen work, maintenance, guards etc. and the smuggling of contraband into the prison should also decline.
Cayman Brac needs to think outside the box and open a strip club. This will be an instant injection into the Brac economy.
Firemen, especially on Cayman Brac have very little to do so why are we appointing MORE of them? We cannot afford this increase in the size of the civil service.
More firemen??? O Lord what are they going to do? They going to cook, play dominoes and sleep.
If you're going to hire more firemen, then you need to build a fire station in the Eastern District, or better yet build a station in the Creek area. That way new station can be close to the dock, the school and also close to Spot Bay. Cause having a fire station at the Airport is fine for the airplanes, but by the time the fire trucks get to a fire at Spot Bay, the fire would have already consumed the house before the fire truck gets there.
Seriously?
This is what the Premier went to the Brac to report?
Wow! The Brac is dying a slow and painful death and we offer them a patrol unit
and 6 new positions at the Fire Department while most of the population are
fed through Social Services?
Hey Moses ol boy let's get real,those days of welcoming those old worn out
folks, who never mingled with the local folks unless to sit and listen to their versions
of country songs and of course laugh at them on the way home,those days are gone!
The older Brackers who same to think they can keep it the way it is should have to foot some of the operational cost instead of preaching how bad Grand Cayman has gotten..It is by far the most red neck Island in the whole Caribbean,well other than Little Cayman!
Watching Mose and the Alden on TVhas cemented that for sure now!
Shake that image,encourage and welcome investors and developments that can put your people to work,no if's or buts 'bout it that's the bottom line.
Move the dump to CYB if they really want jobs.
Complete idiot you are.
Only solutions by ppm is bigger government for us to pay for
That was a good meeting, I go to Mr. Moses meetings whenever I can and am always pleased how he listens to our ideas and lets us know whats going on.
Moses Juliana Alden Kurt and McKeeva have made the Brac the ultimate welfare state with no sign of changing things any time soon. If unemployment is so high why to they have so many people of work permits? It is disgraceful Moses Cleveland and all the big boys need to hire more Bracers than all those pretty mamacitas over there. We are all subsidizing private enterprise for a select few and been doing it for too long.
Suggest we all move to the Brac, seems like they have favoured status over there..
We need to reduce the number of civil service jobs not increase them.
more wonderland stuff…..cayman brac= welfare state…. do the pm ever learn anything from their past mistakes??????
have fun with the sailors…..
Yeah! Instead of helping Brackers, lets do nothing! Lets ignore them like every past government has! Lets not try to fix a broken economy! (Sarcasm)
I believe that the government is doing the right thing. I'm fairly certain that most of you have not once taken any courses in economics. What the government is doing is stimulating the economy. By providing more jobs on the island, the government is allowing money to flow through our economy, and help it grow. On average, a dollar spent once in a community is spent 7 more times before it leaves. If there is just one more person earning $10,000 a year, that means that they have they opportunity to increase spending in the community by $70,000 a year.
You naysayers need to think about the long term effects that these kinds of things. Stop being so nearsighted.
Alden and PPM are on a vote buying spree. Soon 80% of Grand Cayman along with Brac will on the govt. Payroll. Where are going to raise taxes from then PPM numb nuts?
O Jesus does anyone on the Brac have a regular job?