Community affairs boss moves to new ministry

| 04/05/2021 | 20 Comments
  • CaymanNews Service
  • Cayman News Service
  • Cayman News Service
  • Cayman News Service
  • Cayman News Service

(CNS): Another change in the senior civil service line-up supporting the new PACT Government was revealed Tuesday, when Government Information Services issued a release about Minister Bernie Bush’s first visit to departments under his responsibility at the new Ministry of Home Affairs, Youth, Sport, Culture and Heritage. Teresa Echenique, who was one of two chief officers in the ministry of former premier Alden McLaughlin, where she was responsible for community affairs, has now moved to the new home affairs portfolio. PACT has not made any formal announcements about the reshuffle of civil service bosses but the details are slowly emerging.

On Monday Bush visited the Department of Public Safety Communications (DPSC) with Parliamentary Secretary Isaac Rankine, who is assigned to his ministry, and Echenique. Accompanying them were Deputy Chief Officer for Home Affairs Kathryn Dinspel-Powell, who has retained her position from the previous administration, Acting Deputy Chief Officer Melissa Whorms, DPSC Director Julian Lewis, and Assistant Director Sean Vasquez.

During a tour of the control centre and the DPSC offices in George Town, the group was given an in-depth overview of the department’s duties, mission-critical hardware and first responder capacity, GIS said.

“I fully support the role and the vision of the DPSC and look forward to working closely with this team,” Bush said. “The meet and greet was a welcome opportunity for us to interact with staff in their operational environment while gaining invaluable insights into the situational framework the department works within.”


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Category: Politics

Comments (20)

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  1. Elvis says:

    Stop the world i want to get off

  2. Anonymous says:

    Director, Chief Officer, Acting Deputy Director, Acting Deputy Chief Officer, Assistant Director….and the list goes on. Quite incredible how many senior positions there are in government organisations on an island this small. And the hugely inflated salaries that go along with them.

    • Anonymous says:

      Don’t forget the Acting Assistant to the Acting Deputy Chief Officer

    • Despair says:

      This is only the tip of the iceberg. Every time a Chief Officer or Director position is invented, A Deputy is appointed to perform their job for them, this is the way salary ranges are circumvented in the Civil Service

    • Anonymous says:

      and every department has –

      Head of HR, Head of Operations Head of Accounts
      Deputy Head of HR, of Operations and of Accounts
      Senior Assistant Head of HR, of Operations of Accounts
      Assistant Head of HR, of Operations and of Accounts
      Administrative OfficerS for HR for Accounts, for Accounts

      I would like to add up salaries for each of these departments personnel in these three areas – HR, Operations, Accounts. Is it cost effective to be paying that amount of money for the number of staff??

      For eg the HR units are mainly administrative, no responsibility for training staff so why not return to centralized system to process applications and ensure more efficient use if money and people?

      • Anonymous says:

        Just for the record, 7:45, your post is an absolute lie. Sorry about that because of course you are obviously in the fake news brigade. To prove me wrong, give us the details corresponding to your claim of “every department” of the details of those “every departments” you are referring to. Since this first part of your post is a brazen lie, we can safely disregard the rest. You must remember, not all the readers of CNS are as limited as you.

        • Face the Facts says:

          8.13pm We have the highest per capita ratio of civil servants to population of any country in the world. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, whilst you read every edition of the Compass filled with job adverts for the Civil Service and related Govt. entities.

          • Anonymous says:

            Really? There are league tables of civil service to population ratios? That would be an interesting list to see. Where is it?

          • Anonymous says:

            That may very well be true, 9:36 (though I would like to see the source for such an expansive claim as is in your first sentence) but it is a completely different matter to the utterly false statements in the post by 7:45pm to which I responded. I am a non smoker, by the way.

          • Hubert says:

            We have the highest paid Ministers and MP’s of any country in the world too. .😂 😂

            A place with only 65,000 people. What a total joke.

            Something seriously wrong with this picture especially when most of them hold second jobs while in office.

  3. Anonymous says:

    I’ve always wondered why senior civil servants who are trained and qualified in a particular field then assigned to a training-appropriate post but are soon re-assigned/transferred to some field outside their training expertise.

    It would seem that these re-assignments may be the desire of particular Ministers – perhaps based on who they would like to work with rather than the specific expertise!

    They set people up to fail and deprive our CS system of a certain amount of “institutional memory”. Meanwhile the head of the CS, the Deputy Governor, remains asleep at the wheel!!

    What’s new Mr. Panton?

  4. Anonymous says:

    Hopefully Minister Bush will fix the very broken Social Services and Needs Assessment departments.

    • Anonymous says:

      The ones that do not fall under Minister Bush?

    • Anonymous says:

      Come on guys, you cannot squeeze water from a one cent. Bernie will not do any more as a minister than he has done the past 8 years as a whatever he has been! Be realistic please, some of us were not destined to greatness, some of us are destined to just hang on and survive.

      • Obvious & Simple says:

        I would be shocked if your prediction comes through. Bernie was the catalyst for bringing air-conditioned classrooms starting in West Bay and I envisage him following up with Mr Panton and Minister JuJU in equipping schools with solar panels to satisfy their power needs and while becoming carbon neutral.
        Start with the obvious and the simple things that work and avoid the consultants as much as possible.
        Feel the Burn!

        • Anonymous says:

          5/5@2:29pm – Carbon-neutrality through solar panels and other 21st century technology in schools is all good…but under JuJu we’re still graduating kids who don’t know what these mean, can’t even spell them or read the installation directions!

          Improve education, NOT only education facilities!!

          Clearly it won’t be Julianna Connolly but if Bernie or anyone else can get that done in the next 4 years then I’ll be impressed!

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