CIG won’t ‘send civil servants home’
Alden McLaughlin, Cayman Islands Premier
(CNS): Government will not be using job cuts as a way to reduce the costs of the public sector, the premier said Monday when he spoke about the progress he claimed was being made to keep a lid on public spending. While the government has not yet made any decisions regarding the privatization of any public services and is currently focusing on mergers and restructuring the government machine instead, Alden McLaughlin said there were no plans to send civil servants home.
However, he confirmed that the PPM government was increasing the public sector retirement age from 60 years old to 65 years old, which would close down a route of natural attrition to cut the headcount without people losing their jobs.
According to sources in the Civil Service Association, there is a relatively even split among government workers in opinions over the increase in the retirement age. Some are concerned that if they opt to leave before retirement age they will lose their health benefits and so, because of their financial circumstances, they will be forced to carry on working. But others have welcomed the move as an opportunity to earn more and increase their pension provision.
While the civil service has a reputation in some quarters as a bureaucratic machine employing overpaid and unnecessary executives, the reality is that most civil servants are not high earners but in lower or average paid jobs and many will have grave concerns about their retirement.
There is still considerable change ahead for the civil service, and while privatizing parts of government seem a long way off, the PPM administration is focusing on mergers as a way of restructuring the service and cutting costs. On Monday, McLaughlin indicated that he wanted to contain the growth of government but not necessarily make dramatic cuts to public spending, and above all there were no plans for forced redundancies.
He said that over the years the efforts to cut spending had primarily focused on not filling jobs when people retired or left, creating immense pressure on the service but failing to address the real problems. The premier said the objective of Project Future was not to create job losses. As pressure from the community to provide higher quality and more efficient services had grown, government needed to fill vacant posts and even hire new staff, the premier added.
Government’s attempts at cost cutting by not hiring people was the road it had followed since the world economic crisis but the pressure continued to build to fill the jobs, he explained. The overall aim, he said, is to improve efficiency in the delivery of quality services with as few civil servants as possible while striving to avoid sending any home that needed to be working.
Wherever possible, when someone retires and the post does not need to be filled, attrition could still work, he said, but there were no longer very many of those jobs left.
Since the service began enforcing departures of staff reaching retirement age, in many cases the staff had remained on yearly contracts, Deputy Governor Franz Manderson explained.
“We have about 160 to 190 persons who are over sixty, all on contracts,” he confirmed, illustrating the need for government workers despite pressures to cut the headcount. With the move to increase retirement age, Manderson acknowledged that government was losing one route of attrition.
Another route has been the voluntary severance programme. CNS is awaiting the figures from the unit created to manage the civil service downsizing project on how many people throughout the civil service have applied for and how many have actually been made redundant.
Category: Politics
a socialist government like cayman needs to keep many on the govt payroll
that’s the way it is look at how successful cuba is everyone works for the government and do as their leaders say
Cayman is not a socialist government. Its welfare state is provided by giving jobs to locals however it does not stretch to actually helping the real poor, young parents ir the disabled.
Why did we still have almost 200 contracted workers on staff when willing and able Caymanians were MADE to retire on their 60th birthday?
Even if you want to claim productivity as the reason for keeping some, first of all the law and regulations must be applied fairly across the board and any person can be replaced, sometimes even with a better employee.
Second, I have examples that can show expat and Caymanian working side by side and the expat has the most serious health issues, can barely walk and the job involves serious movement sometimes quick reaction, so not considered discriminatory to meet that requirement…. but the expat remains after 60 but Caymanian made to leave.
who?
What a bunch of incredible horse manure 1:59, especially that pathetic last paragraph. Either you should be ashamed of yourself or you are a total hidjut. You embarrass us Caymanians, please stop.
It is a fact that their are those who cannot get out of their own way, who are still employed over 60 years, while others are let go at 60. The reason the expats are kept on is, they were contracted officers before and would not recieve enough pension for the years they worked after getting status.
I wait for the tide to rise and fall.
Just walking through the door of CIG you encounter at least three security guards. What on earth are they protecting? I wager that a family member of the security services who gained the contract works in a top level position.
We know that this is true because not only has this programme not cut staff, its now added an other one (a UK political functionary no less).
Simply put, Alden is too afraid to wield the axe; he’d rather protect his reputation and chances of reelection because these redundancies will result in his election loss come 2017.
Also, I believe that Alden and co. are reluctant to downsize the CS due to lack of planning on their part. Do they even know how would-be redundant employees would secure another job? Probably not. If they had a viable plan in place which guaranteed that the private sector could absorb these job losses, then maybe we’d see the CS shrink. Until then, we’ll see more excuses as to why the recommendations outlined in the EY report are essentially meaningless.
yawn…another slap in the face to e&y and miller shaw reports…..
But they are laughing all the way to the bank and waiting for another report to be commissioned, shelved, restructured or ignored. Terrific?
Another crowd pleaser that does nothing for the efficiency or reputation of Cayman. The silver spoon/ gravy train mentality will never change unless people understand the realities in life, and that CIG prepares and trains them for that life instead of continually feeding the dragon that will eventually topple these fine islands.
This sounds like the premier is restructuring to a ppm government , but not sending anyone home, but cutting cost and raising the age for retirement , in other hand hiring big man. I wonder if a person who has served in government say for 20 years would be getting a pay cut , and have to wait till they are 65 years of age to retire .
The reality is that there was never any hope of change in the Caymanian Government because it is ruled by Caymanian culture. Say what your supposed to say and then do what you have always done. Especially if the rest of the world is not doing it there by proving that it is their own unique way of doing things. It would take a decade of hard daily training to change this so don’t hold your breath.
Is that the reason that you came here and don’t want to leave?
Why does the cig building need so many security guards. Half can’t speak English anyway. Cut back half save money
It’s for serious Ego protection.
Does any senior civil servant own these security companies too? What a mess! no one to stand up to the unethical greedy people ruining this place