Review reveals $17M in cuts
(CNS): The first phase of the government’s review of four public sector entities has identified potential savings of $17 million in spending and over $15 million has been approved by Cabinet. The deputy governor revealed that, following an assessment of the prison service, tourism, CINICO and public works — some of the highest spending agencies — the review team found savings in each of them equal to 21% of the total budget of $72 million currently allocated to the four entities. The review recommends some radical cuts in head counts and changes to services in all four departments.
These cost savings will be realized over the next 12-36 months, Donovan Ebanks told the Legislative Assembly on Monday morning as he outlined the process of the review, which was initiated as a result of the agreement with the UK over the extension to the country’s borrowing parameters under the PMFL. The Cayman government is committed to realizing significant cuts over the next three years in order to eliminate the deficit and reduce borrowing.
Following the success of the first phase of the review, Ebanks said, government was now moving on to the second which will examine another eight agencies and hope to identify similar percentage savings. Ebanks said the results of the review sent a clear message regarding government’s commitment to reining in expenditure.
“To realize $15.2 million in savings from only four of government’s 62 public sector entities is a significant achievement," Ebanks said. "Those sceptics who condemned the approach and affixed to it labels such as ‘the fox guarding the hen house’ will not be as critical going forward when they realize that the approach has yielded accepted recommendations for 21%,” he stated.
Ebanks said the reviews had been conducted by teams of the brightest up and coming civil servants with assistance from the private sector. Ebanks said spending money commissioning an outside agency to conduct the review would have been rather ironic given the goal of the project is to cut government expenses. Now that such significant savings had been identified, he said, the service was committed to making the necessary changes.
“The public should know that Cabinet is fully committed to ensuring that these recommendations are implemented,” the deputy governor stated. “The Cabinet has appointed a monitoring mechanism to ensure that recommendations are not given lip service but instead are carried out as quickly and efficiently as possible and that it is kept regularly appraised of progress.”
He explained that the next phase, which will finish in December, will review the airports authority the port authority, children and family services, computer services, customs, education services, fire services and the RCIPS.
According to the report, which was laid on the table of the Legislative Assembly by the deputy governor making it a public document, the first phase has recommended some radical changes and cuts in order to realize the savings.
In the prison service the review has recommended closing the women’s prison at Fairbanks, have prisoners contribute to their own health care costs, sending high risk prisoners overseas, privatising prison escort and removing the prison officers’ housing allowances. Altogether more than $4 million dollars of cuts was identified in the service.
Meanwhile, in the Department of Tourism the review team recommended that it transfer a number of its jobs to other departments, such as scholarships to the Education Council, accommodation inspections to the Department of Environmental Health and the analysis of tourism statistics to the Economics and Statistics Office, to allow it to concentrate on its core activity of promoting the Cayman Islands. It also recommends that the DoT stop sponsoring events such as the Jazz Fest. The review identified a $3.5 million of possible savings for the department.
Cost cutting at public works will be down to head count reductions and by privatisation of many of the services it currently provides, amounting to over $2.2 million in savings. However, the review team warned that with the current unemployment levels, care needed to be taking when reducing jobs that government did not shift salary costs to social costs.
At CINICO, the government’s health insurance company, the review team recommended that government reconsider the health benefits given to future civil servants, review of existing policies and that the body needed a redesign of its business strategy and claimed it could realize as much as $7.2million.
Category: Headline News
Ok, Mr Ebanks, credit to you and the review teams. Now add to the list for review, the London Office, Cabinet Office, GIS and Protocol Office.
No money to help small businesses? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE $15 Million dollars Mr. Premier got 2 months ago that he reported publicly would go to help SMALL BUSINESSES? Ezzard I want a report on this. Where did this money go to?
Now the plan is to Cut the poor Civil Servants Livelihood! by sucking up to foreign labor work permit fees all in the name of GREED providing 5 DAY WORK PERMITS!!!! WHILE THE CIVIL SERVANTS GET READY TO BE THROWN OUT ON THEIR FACES TO SUFFER WITH NO JOBS! THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! and you have to change your plans on this one.
Donovan SHAME ON YOU!
Donovan as you are well aware, the only employee that is sure of a job in the Cayman Islands are those working on a work permit. They are not to blame at all.
My question to you as Lieutenant Governor responsible for this port folio is Who is going to hire these Civil Servants that you plan on firing ?Donovan you yourself have enjoyed longivity as a Cayman Islands Civil servant working yourself up the ladder, coming up in the ranks as Lieutenant Governor, why can’t you give everyone else the same chance now just to make a living making only a few bucks a day as a blue collar worker in the Department ofo Public works, who are the most vulnerable is being targeted here?
DONOVAN YOU CANNOT DENY THAT THE CIVIL SERVICE GUARANTEES CAYMANIANS A JOB while the Private secnor better known as Corporate Cayman REFUSES TO HIRE CAYMANIANS who are DULY QUALIFIED FOR THE JOB WITH NOTHING MISSING AND NOTHING LACKING for any and all positions they apply for.
Donovan how do you explain throwing these poor Public servants out of the civil service, and under the bus who need to feed their families just like you and I ? While you drive by in your SUV WITH YOUR TINTED WINDOWS ROLLED UP AWAY FROM THEIR SUFFERING?
DONOVAN REMEMBER MR. CRAYDOCK WOULD NO AT ALL DO SUCH A CRUEL THING TO HIS COUNTRYMEN You were raised better than that!
Please reconsider keeping these people employed. Ask them to take a pay cut but do not take their jobs away from. As a matter of fact please find somewhere else to take the money from like cutting the MLA’s pay they are making way too much for doing nothing but agitating the hell out of the voting constitutients.
OK FAIRBANKS PRISON OR SO CALLED WOMENS PRISON WAS ALWAYS A TEMPORARY HOUSING UNIT FOR THE WOMEN WHICH BECAME A PERMANENT FIXTURE NOW IT SEEMS,
ITS TOTALLY UNSUITABLE, BILLS ALONE FOR LIGHTING AND WATER ARE SKY HIGH I HEAR. ALSO THE AMOUNT OF STAFFING UP THERE FOR 14 OR 15 GIRLS IS CRAZY.
FINISH THE BUILDING PROJECT AT NORTHWARD. BRING THE GIRLS BACK TO NORTHWARD IN A SEGREGATED FENCED OFF AREA AND MINIMALISE COST AND CUT STAFFING ALSO AT THE SAME TIME. WATER AND ELECTRICITY IS SAVED AND TRANSPORTATION COSTS FOR GAS ETC WILL BE SAVED TOO, DOHHHHH.
CNS: Thanks for contributing. Next time could you leave the caps lock off, please. I usually delete comments that are written all in capitals.
OK, so they have recommended closing Fairbanks and sending high risk prisoners overseas. But where is the alternative for housing our women prisoners and can they tell me which philanthropic country is going to be so generous as to take our high risk prisoners. Hmmm, no, thought not. You can bet your last dollar that this "streamlining" does not come for free.
I think you are missing the point. It costs less to pay to have them imprisoned outside of Cayman than it costs to maintain them in prison here. It’s not a question of philanthropy but of dollars and cents.
Why find saving now? Why was this not done before or were they just spending as they pleased?
Someone needs their A%$ kicked.
If they watched the books more carefully, we may not be in the mess we are in now.
The savings are a step in the right direction. This is something that should have happened long time ago when Kurt, Alden, Chuckie, and their bunch was in… this should have been their goal – to see the country’s budget balanced! But… to now wait until the last minute when the country sank to do this? Typical… The next step which I hope the UDP are brave now to take, is reduce the size of government so that fees can be lowered
They still have a lot of outstanding bills to pay. How they plan on paying them?
Simple… UDP is thinking out-of-the-box –
CREATE REVENUE
This project had nothing to do with UDP. So why are they getting credit for it? This came from the Office on Internal and External Affairs. UDP will definately jump on the ban wagon, but it was not suggested nor carried out by them. They arent thinking out of the box, they are piggy backing off of someone’s great ideas because they cant think of it themselves.
I await to see the report from Phase 2 especially Customs and RCIP
I hope this review is done fairly? we all know what government likes to do, kill the bottom to protect the top. Trust me we have allot of young civil servants that can run circles around some of these so called chiefs," hey Bo Bo" theirs an idea why don’t they review that?
the udp government is doing a fine job and not many people like what they’re hearing, but that is what happens when you too quike to judge and jump sides. party politics has divided this country and people from seeing what is good for the whole :>)
This had nothing to do with the UDP Government’s efforts, it was a project of the Portfolio of Internal and External Affairs headed up by the Deputy Governor himself, all they are going to do is come along now and take the credit
This has nothing to do with UDP. This idea came from the Office of Internal and External Affairs. The decision was not made to do this by UDP. Please give credit where it is deserved.
Well done review team!! Finally the type of report the people want to see. Identifying is one thing though (CNS posters "identified" most of these 2 years ago), now let’s see things implemented ASAP!
Well done. This is all that we’ve been asking for. Just go in and TRIM THE FAT.
The country will recover (eventually, and sadly it may take over a decade!) only if the civil service STREAMLINES and the Govt stops wasting money that they do not have.
Cut spending and promote growth….sounds pretty simple, but hard to do when your cronies are wailing.
Big Mac, you can be remembered for redemption and fixing govt. or as a greedy politician. One takes guts and unpopular decisions …but future generations will examine your actions long after you’ve gone.
Please be aware where this idea came from. You can learn from the comment above:
This had nothing to do with the UDP Government’s efforts, it was a project of the Portfolio of Internal and External Affairs headed up by the Deputy Governor himself, all they are going to do is come along now and take the credit
The UDP had nothing to do with this and it has nothing to do with giving "Big Mac" credit for fixing any government.
well… credit to whom credit is due
And this coming from Donovan Ebanks
Yeah right!!! We believe Mckeeva Bush AS ALWAYS! Yeah right!!!!
right…money-making Bush as always!
Thank You, LORD! If PPM was still in, we would have been in a financial disaster!
Good for the Deputy Governor. He’s been talking about these review savings for ages now. Glad he’s finally able to show the report to the public. As for the next stage, regarding who’ll do it, "spending money commissioning an outside agency to conduct the review [will still be] rather ironic given the goal of the project is to cut government expenses". No more consultants until cayman can afford them would be a good reccomendation to adhere to.
UDP = EQUAL CUT IN MILLIONS
PPM = SPENDING SPREE
🙂 lol
lol… love it… so true!
Poor Chad