Tourism stipend issues puts ministry under pressure
(CNS): Many tourism stipend recipients had still not received their payments on Tuesday, as government’s efforts to review the system and move at least 600 people to a transitional grant have created a number of challenges and generated dozens of queries from those whose payments are going to be cut. A number of other recipients will receive no money at all because they did not complete a survey sent out earlier this month designed to clean up the list and find out who was working again and who was not.
Given the issues arising from the efforts to find out the status of the more than 3,000 people still receiving the money, the Ministry of Border Control and Labour said it has added additional staff to answer queries about the stipend payments and process updates to banking information.
“We are asking for people’s patience and apologise for any inconvenience caused during the payment process,” said Chief Officer Wesley Howell. “The team answering the queries has found that individual questions can be quite complex and take some time to clarify. We hope to have all issues resolved as soon as possible. I would like to thank the ministry and treasury team who worked over the weekend to process payments.”
There is wide variation in the circumstances of people in the tourism sector impacted by the lack of tourists over the last two years. Therefore, the government is having to take another look at what it means for those returning to work, as many are still on reduced hours or lower salaries, given the dependence on gratuities to make up people’s pay to at least the minimum wage.
In an updated release, officials said that for recipients who elected to have the funds deposited directly to their accounts, their due payments with correct banking details have been submitted to Royal Bank for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). For those who chose to be paid by cheque, the distribution of cheques began on Tuesday, 22 February, from the Government Administration Building on Elgin Avenue, George Town.
Stipend recipients who did not complete the survey sent out in early February have not received any payment, and they are asked to complete the survey to get their money processed.
For more information, call 649-6932 or email stipend@gov.ky
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The system was working pretty good until your ministry got y’all hands on it… Yes cut cut let’s see where that saved money ends up .new boat new vacation new add on for the minister… why don’t y’all cut some of y’all salaries don’t you think 15 thousand vs 15 hundred a month 🤔
Does anyone remember the Dept of Agriculture stipends to farmers? People who never even owned a piece of ground before were granted licenses unchecked. They exploited the programme by going to the front of the line multiple times and shipping their free stuff to their home country. People who genuinely qualified were locked out because of greed and deception.
We have normalized corruption to the point of it now being the 3rd economic pillar of Cayman. Every day we’re looking more like our stepsister to the south and if that won’t scare us straight, nothing will.
The govt needs to settle this. It is easy and would be the smartest move by PACT. Set a date in future – 3 or 4 months from now and the stipend programme is done. Stop the willy-nilly assessments and just like the PPM started it at one date you set an end date then allow those who need assistance beyond that date to seek assistance via already established welfare programmes. This push-back is happening because people feel slated if they are singled out as being less worthy than the next. Set a date and everyone is off at that date as the programme would be over. People can start to prepare. It really is not complicated. Stop playing politics by nit-picking. The PPM wants you to mess this up. Any other way is political suicide.
CIG Self Pay Packet Raises aside, this would have been a good chance to regularise many good Government staffers who are (TODAY) earning less than $2,000/month for full time work!
This is shameful “pay”, with the mounting COL, as Premier states!
Time for people to get off their butts and get a job!
And for those who already have jobs time to get off buts and DO the job!
Of course there should have been minimum needs testing for this exercise, but it was set up by the PPM/Unity, and they can’t buy votes without a cash handout quid pro quo. Even better if they can sign their name to it, from their twisted perspective. Like their Turkey/grocery giveaways.
True.
This stipend issue was never equitable in the first place as it was applied only to one industry, and not all who were affected. This left many out in the cold with no assistance at all, such as newly established businesses less than a year old and those who were not 100% Caymanian because they’d had to seek foreign investment to get the company off the ground in the first place. No assistance at all. No public responsibility of accountability. No idea. Poor leadership skills on display.
Very true many Caymanian and other businesses sectors are experiencing hardship, which are not tied to the tourism industry.
Let’s be bluntly honest, there will be many on this permanently in the form of transition to NAU. Once people are given free money there is no going back – politically.
I do agree many definitely needed help but we all know how this ends..or not.
Wes and his ministry have been given the short straw here – Stran Bodden and the Ministry of Tourism neatly side-stepping the problem created by their total mismanagement of the system in giving payments – and continuing to do so- to people employed by Govt and elsewhere in full-time employment.
The mess is Tourism’s, Stran’s and Kenneth’s…
Wes and his team are just trying to clear it up for them .
Poor Wesley he has to cover for his Minister that has lost the plot and is a bull in a china shop everyday
Minister Saunders campaigned on Jobs and finance. He has the answers to this problem and inflation. Just watch this space!
Saunders knows the restaurant on Eastern avenue who for years has ignored court orders to pay long outstanding pensions to its workers.
He should exercise his powers to help the suffering here as a good start to keeping his promise to look after his people dem.
Headline should read “Inability to manage public money puts ministry under pressure”. It’s not the stipend that’s the issue – it’s the fact that they can’t seem to account for who is getting it and why. Lot easier just to dole it out to anyone who asks for it. It’s only when public outcry as to fully employed people and prisoners getting it that they get themselves in knots.
There should be no pressure. If someone could not fill out the form, then they don’t get the money. IF they are elderly,, then maybe an exception should be made, but for all others, the reason is they were too lazy, too incompetent, or not deserving of the stipend. Enough is enough.
I support the general premise of the stipends but of course, for people who genuinely need it. I’m a retiree on a decent pension, I also own a tourist-related business which has not had a client since early March 2020. I am firmly eligible for the stipend but I declined to apply for it because I felt others need it more than I – some of my staff, for example.
I am against fraud of any kind, so I do not agree with anyone continuing to claim the stipend who now has a job.
However, if successive Governments can give duty-free concessions to Mike Ryan, Dart, Health City, Turkish billionaires and other developers, DAMN if I’m going to complain if a couple thousand genuinely unemployed Caymanians get a barely-livable stipend per month! As long as it’s genuinely eligible unemployed Caymanians! But who knows!!
I think we can agree that the stipend was not supposed to be an open bursary to take out a third world work permit for the job the applying Caymanian laments is on hiatus. No other industry has this abnormal disproportionate public funding support.
These people cannot organize anything. Remember the cruise port referendum? Thousands of signatures from thousands of voters. All verified. All in perfect order. All gathered by volunteers at almost no cost.
Then enter the civil service. Millions spent vetting every single signature. Not a single error found.
They have long forgotten who they work for. They are accountable to the Caymanian people, not their “political masters”.
They could have done a random spot check to verify. Waste waste waste. And all like they are at war with the public.
Off course they cannot organize anything- lack of brain cells among this lot. Very sad but we all should have expected this!
Next election, if there is a “real alternative” to PPM or UDP, or combination thereof, who are unified and competent, 2025 will be a clean sweep.
11.10am Elect some highly qualified, honest, and experienced status holders as M.P.s who may be relied upon not to scratch backs. There are plenty to choose from.
Yeah, that’s why their home countries are all so 100% happy with their current Governments.
(Well, maybe the Barbadians can hold their noses in the air over everyone.)
This clean sweep needs to happen NOW, not 2025 my friend. We cant endure the next 3 years. We simply cant. In a time when the less fortunate of this country are begging and crying for help, this bright bunch we have as a govt. purchases land for some $5,000,000.00 but can’t find stipends to assist the vulnerable. A referendum needs to be triggered ASAP to have an election.
Sir Alden, please come and save us from all these problems being caused. We need you now.
When he was the government the same thing was happenning!
He was the greatest leader Cayman ever had. That is why the Queen has bestowed so many honors upon him. I want him as the Premier for life!
Sir Alden is the best ever! PPM for ever!
No McKeeva was the greatest. Loved his turkeys.
A God in West Bay and a knighthood for him next year.
Our best and brightest in Cayman.
Exactly. He set the tone.
Stipend recipients who did not complete the survey should not be receiving any more payments until their current circumstances have been verified.
The bigger issue here is that the government needs to come to terms with the fact that these so-callled stipend payment are the start of a permanent social safety net and these payments will go in some form for the foreseeable future.
gsm…gimme some money………
While there is, I’m sure, quite a lot of fraud going on with the stipend, I am also sure that a great many of those people truly need that money to survive. It is a shame that there are people out there abusing this well-intentioned but extremely expensive stipend to the harm of vulnerable people. However, The government simply cannot afford to continue to pay this out forever. A real review of this was necessary months ago and now that talk of cruise ships coming back, people should be prepared to go back to work.
No clue
It’s understandable why Chris Saunders said he wasn’t going to prosecute the people who fraudulently applied for the tourism stipend.
Because all 19 of the politicians would probably be implicated in the criminal probe as well.
That could possibly then trigger the UK to step in if mass government corruption is found out.
Our Pirate DNA shining through again.
In other countries people would get charged for the fraud, heads would roll in the Civil Service and the Minister might even have to resign.
Here is is just another day with the usual antics and politricks.
Why? They aren’t paying for it
While it’s very important to reward the people who support you, and those you can potentially sway towards supporting you, it is even more important to punish those who may be inclined support another politician.
I suppose they didn’t complete the survey because they are now working or they are afraid of self- incriminating. I hope the government does not defeat the purpose by spending too much time and labour on trying to figure out the reason. If they didn’t complete the form then take them off the list.
And yet Government is moving forward with the closure of Cardinal Avenue. All of this bather about supporting Caymanians is disingenuous. PACT is just the same as the UDP, or PPM. Prices are sky high, so duties are causing a double whammy on small businesses. A shipment that a year ago cost me 1k for shipping fees is now 2.5k that is an extra duty fee of 20% on 1500! (Would be 22% to a Caymanian citizen without a T&B). And all of us who did the right thing are being screwed by these ivory tower idiots. We hired only Caymanians. We switched to a local business model. They have no idea what the real world is like. Zero. Because they do not live in the real world. They get paid if they fail. I do not.
Maybe if they did the survey the correct way, they probably wouldn’t be in this mess.
The survey only asked about income. They didn’t ask about dependents, bills or any financial situation.
The government just jumped to conclusions and decided to cut all full time employees without investigating.
They had to backpedal their first statement and now more investigating need to be done in order to know if you are eligible or not.
This process could have been avoided. Now some people are waiting to see when or if they will get their payment.
What was the point of the first email sent to the persons now on the Recovery Grant that states, it will be reduced for February and March if some persons are not eligible for the grant?
They should have already sent an email stating that such persons are or no longer eligible.
I called the number provided in the email. The calls were answered, then they ask for you information and bank account # and they say they will call back to let you know if you are eligible. No calls are ever returned.
What people want now is, peace of mind.
No, what you want is to keep getting the money, be honest.
The government pays a lot of money to a lot of people who do a lot of nothing.
And that’s just the Civil Service alone.
6.13pm The Civil Service in a nutshell!.
3000!!!!! Seriously????? PHREE MUNNY!!!!! Absolutely bonkers. Meanwhile prices in shops, utilities and gas is going through the roof. And you can’t tell me that all these things aren’t a stealth tax to pay for this madness.
They are giving money to people who do not qualify. When they find out they are giving money to persons who do not qualify, no one is held accountable for the error. When they find people who claimed and obtained money they were not entitled to (fraudsters) no one makes them pay it back, let alone prosecutes them. This is a shitshow. Stewards and guardians of public funds? Madness. It is state sponsored vote buying and influence peddling. Where are our robust law enforcers, free from political influence and charged with investigating and prosecuting crime?
I agree, it is a shitshow. But it’s Cayman, nothing surprising here. Corruption, poorly educated, and lack of ethics at all levels.
What about other Government subsidies to wealthy associations, which received unlawful subsidy by the Unity-PPM government, such as CILPA to fund CARA?
CARA and CILPA are facilitating breaches of Law. They are now part of the problem.
Been doing that for a long time. No one is looking out for what is right for Cayman since the CBA was disbanded.
Does CARA not realize that practicing Cayman Law without a practicing certificate is an offense? How is it not doing anything to stop that? How is it not doing anything to force those it is supposed to be regulating to be compliant with the Immigration Law and the Local Companies (Control) Act?
Unfortunately when law enforcement does take a robust approach to investigating criminal activity which impacts the political and vested interests here they are shut down quickly. The corruption runs right to core of government and if anyone has the audacity to challenge it they’re simply undermined and removed.
Agreed @ 5:22 pm.
Governor, Deputy Governor, Anti-Corruption Commission, what do you have to say about this? Premier?
Governor – please take this on immediately if you are serious about improving the civil service.
#leggewasright
This stuff makes Gasboy look like small change. Governor? Seriously? When does corruption become corruption? Why is this all OK?
Time for direct rule Governor, to clean up the corruption.
Instead of that dramatic step, how about we first try holding the civil service accountable? See if they can prosecute the fraudsters. Pretty simple stuff really. They will start telling us who helped them.
Most likely in the office next door with stacks of recommendation files which sit unseen and unsigned by the cabinet members elected to make the final decisions you are commenting on. Nice little circle of absolution they have created for themselves the cabinet members have. Cant keep blaming the civil service and the ombudsman if the guys voted in to sign off key decisions would rather not do that for fear of ballot box retribution.