Archive for April, 2014
Court goes easy on brawling jealous chef
(CNS): An executive chef from one of Cayman’s leading restaurants was given 120 hours community service by a judge Thursday after he broke a man’s jaw in a jealous rage during a fight at a West Bay Road gas station. Michael Fischetti, a chef at Ortanique restaurant in Camana Bay, punched Edenis Miguel Rives hard enough to knock him out and break his jaw, even though the man was trying to get away. Fischetti was convicted following a three day judge-alone trial before Justice Swift in February in connection with the fight last March, when the chef over-reacted after seeing his girlfriend embrace male friends at the gas station in greeting.
Although Fischetti was facing a possible custodial sentence, the court found in his favour because of a degree of provocation and his previous good character. In addition to the 120 hours of voluntary work the chef will now be required to undertake in the community, he was also ordered to pay his victim’s medical bills of more than $3,000.
See related story here: Chef-found-guilty-jealousy-fuelled-brawl
Employment Ministry to track job seekers’ progress
(CNS): The Employment Ministry is developing an assessment process for job seekers who want help from an employment services officer in their search for work that will include psycho-social assessment, mental health screening, career assessment and an assessment of employability skills, Minister Tara Rivers said in a statement to the Legislative Assembly Thursday. She said that this process, which should be in place by the end of April, was in response to feedback from employers and job seekers about the discrepancy between the skills an employer wants and the level of skills present within a segment of Cayman's unemployed population.
She said the process would help to identify the level and type of support and services required to move job seekers closer to the job market. To support the intake and assessment process, the minister said, the Computer Services Department is building a professional development interface, which will record the activities that the job seeker has committed to engage in.
“This interface will track the progress of job seekers and hold them accountable to engaging in the work necessary to address their respective barriers to employment. This interface will also facilitate the opportunity for online case management of individuals who are seeking support and services from multiple government agencies,” Rivers said.
Rivers said that a review of the work of the National Workforce Development Agency (NWDA) Employment Services Unit found that a strong collaborative relationship with the Immigration Department and its boards was crucial to ensuring that Caymanians have a fair and equal opportunity in the recruitment process, and that the immigration department and its boards rely heavily upon the ESU to provide the necessary information to make informed decisions regarding the granting of work permits.
“In response, my Ministry with the support of the Computer Services Department set out to expand the NWDA database to include an Immigration Interface which will ensure that that immigration department and its boards have the information required in a timely manner to make informed decisions,” she said. “The delivery of such a system was a major campaign promise and is absolutely essential to enhance the collaboration, the efficiency and the effectiveness in the way these two agencies – the NWDA and the immigration department – interact with one another.”
On 25 February the ministry launched the NWDA-immigration database interface, which, the minister said, “is designed to facilitate significant positive change in the way Immigration and NWDA work with each other”.
She said the database is facilitating transparency in the work permit process; providing an efficient and effective way for employers to communicate efforts to hire a suitably qualified Caymanians; and providing an effective and efficient way for the NWDA to provide information to the immigration department and its boards that will allow for informed decisions to be made by them when processing work permit applications.
Under the new process, after an employer registers a job with the NWDA, the agency system runs a query to identify job seeking clients who broadly meet the requirements of the post. Then an NWDA employment services officer reviews the matches for appropriateness and with authorization from job seekers, refer candidates that are a reasonable fit for the post.
NWDA job seeking clients are able to view job posts and have the option to self-refer and the employer clients receive notification of matches for those who have self-referred or who have been referred by the NWDA. The employer, who is responsible for reviewing all candidates and determining their suitability, is provided with a section on the database where they can record the outcome of each referral.
If the employer does not select a Caymanian and chooses to apply for a work permit, the immigration department and its boards will be able to pull up the referral record and view the list of people who were referred or self-referred, the rationale for the referral and the reasons the company gave to explain why no suitable applicant was found.
This process will ensure that immigration is aware of every person that was referred or self-referred and the outcome of the recruitment process, the minister explained.
“It is important to note that there is no legislation that mandates employers to register their companies with the NWDA or post available jobs with the NWDA. While this interface facilitates transparency in the work permit process, it only accomplishes this for jobs that are posted with the NWDA where persons have applied for the post through the NWDA,” Rivers said.
“What my Ministry has done is to create a valuable and critically important service and we are encouraging employers and job seekers to utilize it in the process of recruitment and job seeking. The approach right now is to create something that is useful to job seekers and employers, and we are inviting feedback as we further develop the system to ensure that it is fit for purpose.”
A district outreach programme is also underway, in which the Training and Development Unit of the NWDA has partnered with Library Services to deliver NWDA employment services at the District public library branches on a monthly basis. “Through this opportunity Caymanians can meet with a representative of the NWDA at their district library for assistance with any activity related to job seeking including registering with the NWDA, searching for jobs on the online portal, self-referring for jobs, resume writing, and interview preparation,” Rivers said.
Ex top cop settlement saved cash, says premier
(CNS): The secret settlement with the former police commissioner has saved the government cash, the premier said Thursday as he justified the undisclosed pay out. Although sources have revealed an unconfirmed figure of around $600,000 government is currently obligated to keep quiet about how much tax payers’ money it has given to Stuart Kernohan as a result of the infamous Operation Tempura. Alden McLaughlin said mounting legal expenses following failed efforts at mediation had reached in excess of $1M and were set to escalate as the trial approached. With no guarantee government would win, if it didin’t not only would it face its own massive legal bill but Kernohan's as well.
Speaking in the Legislative Assembly, the premier said he could not say much about the case or the terms of the settlement. Aware of the understandable calls for the terms of the settlement to be made public but, he said, it was not an uncommon for settlements of this type to be subject to confidentiality.
“All I can say is that, after careful deliberation, the government determined that the wisest course was to avert the mounting legal expenses associated with the case by negotiating a settlement, and that is what we have done,” McLaughlin added. “We are however confident in saying that, given the amount that was being claimed against the government, by settling the matter in the manner we did, and the time we did, we have managed to avoid incurring significantly more legal costs than if the matter had gone to trial.”
McLaughlin said he appreciated that a lot more needs to be said about what he described as the “sad chapter in Cayman's history” known as ‘Operation Tempura’. “I look forward to the day when a more fulsome statement can be and will be made,” he said.
The premier was part of the 2005-09 PPM Cabinet at the time of the ill-fated investigation which had agreed not to pay the operation Tempura bills because of the obvious flaws and issues relating to the costly investigation. This forced the then governor, arguably the least popular UK representative in recent history, Stuart Jack to use his reserve powers to take the money from the public purse.
The story is a long way from over however, with critical documents still kept under wraps and side shows such as the battle between the SIO on the case Martin Bridger and Kernohan as well as the complaints that Bridger has now filed with the Metropolitan Police in London and the Foreign Office which Baines has been taxed with examining.
Kernohan had always said that the governor, the overseas security advisor and the attorney general knew about and had endorsed the covert entry into a local newspaper office. However, Bridger now alleges no one told him. He has claimed that because he didn’t know and assumed Kernohan and his colleague John Jones were going off on a “frolic of their own” this triggered the long and costly pointless probe that seemed to consist of a catalogue of bungles and incompetence by all the officials involved.
The total bill for Operation Tempura which began as an undercover Operation with two UK officers in September 2007 grew to bea massive scandalous affair involving senior police officers, high court judges and several costly court room productions is hard to estimate.
None of it solved anything and exposed no police corruption but when the UK undercover cops left the bill was already well over $10million and has been increasing ever since. In addition to that the government has spent almost $1.8million in litigation alone fighting the various suits or trying to keep embarrassing documents out of the public domain.
Mac moves marina motion
(CNS): The leader of the opposition presented a private member's motion to the Legislative Assembly Wednesday calling for government to give unqualified support for the proposed marina on Cayman Brac at Saltwater Pond, adjacent to the Alexander Hotel. Several members of the Dilbert family, who own the hotel and have applied for a coastal works licence in connection with the marina, were present at the civic centre on Cayman Brac, where the LA is sitting this week, as McKeeva Bush called the project a “beacon of light” for the island. The government voted for the motion, but only after it had been amended to say that its support for the marina was contingent on the results of an environmental impact study – a position it already held, regardless of the motion.
During the debate it was revealed by Deputy Premier Moses Kirkconnell that the Dilberts have told Cabinet that if they are allowed to develop the marina, they have plans to expand the Alexander Hotel, even though they have previously stated that the hotel is on average only 25% full.
The motion also called for the Brac to have its own “environment oversight committee”, made up of Brackers, which would not, apparently, include the Department of Environment. The DoE, Bush told the House, had been running an “orchestrated effort on CNS to badmouth the developer and all kinds of evil” and making everyone “believe that they are the worst type of people in the world”.
Brackers were suffering, he said, with as many as 300 people on welfare and the island dependent on $13 to $16 million (per year) in government subsidies. Soon, he said, the islanders would have to deal with the same criminal activity as Grand Cayman if they let the people there “ground you into the ground because of their environmental likes and dislikes”.
The opposition leader said the proposal had been “attacked” by the DoE, and accused the department of deliberately giving wrong information to stop the project from moving forward. He claimed the marina, which would take one to one and a half years to build, would stimulate the Brac economy in all sorts of ways.
Bush noted that government had received a letter “signed by 21 solid Cayman Brackers – educated Brackers and with good common sense”, who had made “a unanimous decision” to ask government to relax environmental considerations and approve the project in the next two weeks.
“The Brac people is going to have the say,” he said, calling for a timeframe so that “no one from the DoE can draw it out”, and said that similar projects on the Brac should have similar treatment.
Nevertheless, the government stood firm that the project required an environmental impact study, and Premier Alden McLaughlin pointed out that Cabinet already approved the project in principle several weeks ago, contingent on the result of the EIA.
The deputy premier, who is the first elected member for the Sister Islands, shared a conversation he had had with Cleveland Dilbert, the patriarch of the family. “One of the things I said was that we had to do an EIA because my legacy was not going to be that I destroyed the West End of Cayman Brac,” said Kirkconnell. Cleveland, he recalled, had said that he did not want it to be his legacy either, “so I am very confident that he meant that he wanted to ensure that it is done in the right way,” he said.
He said they were all saying the same thing – making sure that the project was done right – and he maintained that he wanted this project to go forward.
London office top job now up for grabs
(CNS): Following the departure of Lord Blencathra and his consultancy firm from the London office, as a result of changes in the House of Lords rules and regulations, the premier has said that the job is now being advertised. Speaking in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday Alden McLaughlin told his parliamentary colleagues that government “will diligently strive to hire the best person for the job” and to get the best level of service from the London Office. He said the UK office served an ever increasingly critical role supporting Cayman’s relationship with the United Kingdom, other Overseas Territories and key international organizations.
Although it had become increasingly apparent that the Conservative peer originally hired by McKeeva Bush in 2011 could no longer represent Cayman in the wake of concerns raised by the Lords Commissioner for Standards Paul Kernaghan and the recent changes to regulations, McLaughlin said that Blencathra maintains his efforts on behalf of the Cayman Islands Government did not breach the code of conduct.
The premier said that Blencathra had played an important role as a consultant to the Cayman Islands Government providing advice and guidance on a vast range of UK and EU matters and the government would need to fillt he void he has now left.
“I it is critical that government continues to have the benefit of proper advice on these matters in order to protect and promote the interests of the Cayman Islands.,” he said. “We are considering our options. The advice and guidance Lord Blencathra has given to Government over the years has been invaluable.”
TV money guru to do one night show in Cayman
(CNS): Two-time Emmy Award-winning television host, New York Times bestselling author, magazine and online columnist Suze Orman is coming to the Cayman Islands to give a one-off talkat the Westin next month. Orman is also the contributing editor to “O” The Oprah Magazine and is in her 12th year of her award winning show, which airs every Saturday night on CNBC. Last year Forbes magazine awarded Orman a spot in the top 10 on a list of the most influential celebrities of 2013 and the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television honoured her broadcast career accomplishments with her inclusion in its historic Emmy TV Legends interview collection.
Tickets for the event on 24 May at The Westin Grand Cayman are CI$40 and set to go on sale on Monday. The event is being organized by Colonial Pension Services Limited and Marie Jo Caesar, the chief operating officer, said the visit was creating a buzz around the Cayman Islands.
“Ms Orman’s talk will help show people that they can take control of their personal finances using simple truths about making priorities for their financial future,” she said. “I am a huge fan of Ms Orman and think that this event is going to be one of the must go-to events of the year.
The $5,000 retirement account door prize will also be a much needed addition to the lucky winner’s pension plan. It is impossible to underestimate the importance of investing in your future,” Ceasar added.
Tickets are available from BritCay Insurance Agencies, BritCay House, 236 Eastern Avenue, George Town. Call 914 9834 or email cgi.suzeorman@colonial.bm. British Caymanian Insurance Agencies Ltd. is the agent for Colonial Pension Services Ltd., a registered pension provider in the Cayman Islands.
Students scoop Commonwealth essay contest awards
(CNS): Seventeen students from government and private schools have received prizes for winning the 2013 Commonwealth Essay Competition, organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS). Nine of the students were international competition winners that judges selected from among 11,000 entries from 55 Commonwealth countries and territories. The theme for both the local and international segments was Opportunity through Enterprise. Five students from St. Ignatius Catholic School received international recognition including two gold awards, one silver and two bronzes. St Ignatius also took home the Elliott cup. Layman E. Scott High School earned one gold while Cayman Prep and High collected two silvers and a bronze.
The winners were: Taurean Cox – St. Ignatius Catholic – senior bronze and Elliott cup winner;
Aniela McGrath – St. Ignatius Catholic School– junior gold;
Abijith Anu – Layman E. Scott High School, Cayman Brac – junior silver;
Matilda Copley Kyne – St. Ignatius Catholic School – junior silver;
Finn Lovegrove, Rishaa Patel and Zephan Deosaran – all from Cayman Prep and High School – junior silver; and Arjun Dhanasekar and Isha Rankin – St. Ignatius Catholic School – junior bronze.
In the local competition, George Town Primary School (GTPS) won three gold awards and a silver award. Red Bay Primary (RBPS) received two silvers while John Gray High earned a silver and Prospect Primary one bronze.
Local winners were: Senior silver: Oneka Thompson – John Gray High;
Junior gold: Alec Harding, Leah Robinson and Joshua O’Garro – all GTPS;
Junior silver: Makeda Harris – GTPS; Matthew Leslie and Philip Mathura – RBPS;
Junior bronze: Alexander Thompson – Prospect Primary.
Presenting the awards at a reception that she hosted for the winners, parents, teachers and local organisers on Thursday, 27 March 2014 at Government House, Governor, Helen Kilpatrick said that the students should feel justifiably proud of these accomplishments.
MLA Winston Connolly praised the young people for their accomplishments, and thanked the RCS for providing them with an opportunity to hone their creative writing skills and individual talents. He exhorted the winners to continue to work hard to further develop their abilities.
Robber left pile of clues
(CNS): A 34-year-old man made easy work for the RCIPS when he left a pile of incriminating evidence just yards away from the scene of a daylight robbery. One of four men arrested in connection with the Sprint courier hold-up outside a local insurance firm on 4 October 2012, Manuel Carter, not only left his jeans by the abandoned getaway car with the loaded gun used in the robbery in the front pocket, the pants also contained his wallet with his driver’s licence and other identifying information. DNA and fingerprints from him and two of his co-conspirators were also left on the car, which led the police to arrest three members of the criminal gang in West Bay early in the case. Brandon Liberal was the fourth man arrested in the joint enterprise over a year later.
Carter and Liberal had originally pleaded not guilty and a trial was set for February, and despite the selection of a jury, both men made a 'court house door’ admission ahead of the crown opening its case against them.
A third man, John Cohen, who admitted his part in the crime at a much early stage, also gave evidence to the police against his co-conspirators. He is awaiting sentence for his part in the daylight heist in the car park of BritCay Insurance in Eastern Avenue, George Town. Meanwhile, the fourth robber, Tarick Crawford (18), who was said to have driven one of the two getaway cars to the scene, has not yet made any formal admissions in the case as his fitness to plead to the crime remains in dispute.
Appearing before Justice Quin on Thursday for sentencing, Carter and Liberal stood convicted of robbery and possession of an unlicensed firearm. The court heard from the director of public prosecutions, Cheryl Ricahrds, QC, that Carter was the masked man who held up the courier driver as he came out of the BritCay offices with the money deposits.
Carter made off into a white getaway car being driven by Cohen with some $8,500 dollars in local and US currency as well as a number of cheques. The men sped off down Eastern Avenue and then turned into Bodden Road and abandoned that car in a side road behind Puritan Cleaners. It was there that the men took the cash from the courier bag but left the cheques, envelops and deposit slips on the ground.
Carter also changed clothes but left his jeans pants containing a lighter, a cigarette butt, the hand gun and even his wallet before getting into a second grey getaway vehicle driven by Liberal, who took both him and Cohen back to West Bay.
The men left DNA and finger prints in and on the white car, which was quickly found by police and all four men were recorded on CCTV by the security camera in the Kirks Home Centre car park. Police were also later to secure telephone evidence connecting the gang. The court heard that the men had planned together to execute the robbery and had been watching the office building for some time to see when the courier van came and went in order to plot the crime.
The men had scheduled the heist for 3 October but the hapless robbers were out of luck that day as the courier van never showed up. The next day, however, as the four waited in the car park across the street at Kirks in full view of the CCTV cameras, they communicated via hand held radio.
When the Sprint courier van finally arrived, Liberal was said to have given the code signal for the heist to begin: “the foods on the table”, the court heard and Cohen and Carter sprang into action. The men drove across to the BritCay office, where Carter got out of the car and approached the courier driver, armed with a hand gun, which he pointed at the man’s stomach as he took the cash bag from him.
The robbers escape was short lived as an officer on patrol had heard the details of the robbery on the police radio system and she soon located the white getaway vehicle. Once scenes of crime officers arrived and Carter’s jeans, gun and ID uncovered, the case was not a difficult one to crack.
Following the crown’s outlining of the charges and circumstances against the two men, local attorneys Charles Clifford and John Furniss, representing Carter and Liberal, spoke for their clients. However, the lawyers faced an uphill battle as there was little room for mitigation as the law calls for a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years for a firearms conviction with a possible reduction to seven for a guilty plea.
With 23 previous convictions, ranging from drug possession to burglary and assault, Clifford said that Carter had faced a difficult life and had been failed by the system from an early age. He told the court that Carter, who was born in Cuba to a Cayman father and Cuban mother, could not speak English when he was brought to Cayman at a young age and because he struggled in school with the second language he was a slow learner but was sent to the Lighthouse School, which was an inappropriate environment, Clifford said.
Struggling his entire life with a cocaine addiction, Clifford said his client genuinely wanted to turn his life around and would be seeking to take up the services on offer at the jail to rehabilitate himself. Clifford said his client now found himself called something he never wanted to be because of the drug – a robber,which, he added, had been something of a wake-up call.
Meanwhile, with no serious previous convictions and having played a lesser role in the robbery as the getaway driver, Liberal had admitted his guilt much sooner, his lawyer noted, and he was not charged until late last year. Furniss asked the court to give full credit to his client, who had been of relative good character with possession of ganja the only previous offence against him before his involvement in armed daylight robbery.
The judge in the case, Justice Charles Quin, listened to the submissions and adjourned that case until 24 April, when he said he would deliver his decision on sentencing as he remanded Carter and Liberal in custody.
Long road to dump solution
(CNS): There will be no quick fixes or immediate solutions to the pressing issue of the George Town landfill, despite the recent fact finding mission by the minister responsible and the premier last week. Osbourne Bodden told his parliamentary colleagues Wednesday that the strategic outline case will be going before cabinet shortly. That would be followed in around four to six weeks by an RFP for consultants to deliver a national waste management strategy. The next stage will be an Outline Business Case. After that the project can finally move towards a procurement process. Setting out the long road ahead, Bodden said that Cayman doesn’t have a waste-management policy and until it does it can’t offer a solution to the dump.
Speaking in the Legislative Assembly, the minister said that the technical Steering Committee has been working on the strategic outline case, which he said would be made public once it reviewed and approved by Cabinet. That will form the basis for the first RFP for consultants to deliver services in two stages, he added. Bodden explained the first would be the delivery of the national waste management strategy to identify project options for assessment, and the second stage will be the delivery of the Outline Business Case that will look at the best option for the project itself which in turn will form the basis for the procurement and implementation.
He admitted that the process was going to take time but not, he said an unwarranted delay, as has been suggested
“The process takes time, but I believe it is time well-spent that will help us to ensure we have a project that not only meets our needs, but has identified and considered potential issues, obstacles, and project impediments, and identified ways to address these prior to project implementation,” he said, adding that this would mean, “fewer delays, cost over-runs, and unintended consequences” once the project starts. “It is effectively ‘front loading’ some of the time, but I am confident that we will see the benefits down the road,” the minister added.
In the meantime, the department of environmental health was making improvements to the George Town Landfill, he said, and examining some short-term improvements for the Cayman Brac landfill as well.
“The Department will continue to make every effort to ensure that the service they provide, and the management of their landfill sites on all three islands, are optimised. Obviously we need to make sure that any measures we take in the short-term will not negatively impact our ability to implement the long-term solution once it is identified, so we are carefully assessing the improvements as we go to ensure they meet our short-term objectives without unintended long-term consequences,” Bodden said.
On their recent trip to Tampa both Bodden and the premier, Alden McLaughlin visited four waste-to-energy facilities, two landfills, and one recycling processing centre and saw the waste-to-energy process in action and the different governance structures that he said the government may want to explore as part of the procurement processes. Dismissing comments that the trip was a waste of time he said he was able to see first-hand what a waste-to-energy facility looks like and experience the conditions in its vicinity.
“It was an incredibly informative trip,” he said. “It has given me an enhanced understanding of waste-to-energy technology, and its possible role in the integrated solid waste management solution for the Cayman Islands.”
Excited about waste-to energy, Bodden said he was not necessarily committed to that technology alone as he said it was up to the steering committee to research and advice on the best solution for the country.
“The process which they are undertaking is a requirement under our finance law, and it requires careful assessment and consideration of the various components of a project, including financial, environmental, and legal implications and requirements. The process takes time, but I believe that the approach is well-founded and will result in a better project, with an increased chance of success, for the country,” he added.
The premier justified his reasons for joining the fact finding trip stating that it had given hima much better understanding of the complex issue of solid waste management.
“While I know that some have questioned the utility of the trip and wondered why I went along, I can state without reservation that the trip was very informative and very worthwhile,” he said. “It reinforced my belief in the importance of having an overarching strategy when looking at solid waste management. It is a complex issue with many moving parts, so it is important to take a strategic and rational approach when looking for a solution. We simply cannot afford to take a piece-meal approach to this problem – we need to look no further than the current situation to know that approach will not lead to a sustainable solution.”
He spoke about the need not to repeat past mistakes and said the procurement process for major projects such as the landfill is outlined in the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility. McLaughlin said the processes now in place were in large part because “of the disastrous consequences of the last tendering exercise” as he pointed to the UDP’s efforts at finding a waste management solution. This time around, he said the procurement process would be transparent and accountable.
“While there have been previous tenders, and there are quite a few studies about this subject, the fact is that the previous iterations were not subjected to the level of research, assessment, and scrutiny that the process currently requires,” the premier added.
See both statements delivered in the LA on Wednesday below
New road speed limits due next month
(CNS): Following the review of and public consultation on the speed limits across the Cayman Islands the National Roads Authority has completed its new speed zones map which will soon be reviewed by Cabinet. Once it meets with approval from the government officials from the NRA said that they expect the new speed limits will be gazetted in May. The changes will include dropping the speed limit on West Bay Road to 30mph, reducing the 50mph speed up in the area of Morritz and Reef resorts in East End and introducing a new 35mph limit in some areas.
The results of the review of the safety of Cayman’s entire road network which was undertaken by international experts iRAP in January are expected in May or June which will inform further safety regulations to reduce accidents on the local roads an make the ones that happen less likely to fatal or even serious.
In the meantime, the NRA is continuing to utilize various strategies to make the roads safer and is testing countermeasures such as transverse rumble strips and anti-skid coating at some crosswalks and major roundabouts.
“Both the transverse rumble strips and the anti-skid coating are internationally proven methodsof reducing road collisions. They are especially effective where loss of friction results when rain, oil and other lubricants are deposited on the roadways,” officials stated.
While technical solutions to improve road safety can go a long way in the end safe driving is the surest way to cut down smashes. The NRA encouraged all road users to remain alert to their surroundings and road conditions, follow posted speed limits and obey the rules of the road.
For more information please contact the National Roads Authority (NRA) at 946-7780 and visit the website at www.caymanroads.com