Minister aims to create welfare-to-work regime
(CNS): Social Development Minister André Ebanks says the fundamental reforms he is planning to steer through Parliament next month will create a new regime in which many people currently receiving financial help from the government will transition into permanent employment and self-sufficiency. At the same time, it will offer more support for those not able to work and remove indignities for the elderly and disabled who need permanent assistance.
Ebanks envisions expanding the support that government offers to families, which will increase public spending in the short term. But the system is being reshaped to provide a welfare-to-work model that in the long term will decrease expenses. Younger clients and those who are able-bodied will be required to do something meaningful in exchange for the money or resources they receive from the government, which will also better equip them to become self-reliant, the minister said.
Speaking to CNS following the publication of the new Financial Assistance bill, which will repeal the Poor Relief Law when it goes through Parliament next month, the minister said that while he expects spending to increase in the first instance as more families and households are helped, as time goes on dozens of families will become less and less dependent on government as those who are able to will return to work in well-paid jobs.
Ebanks explained that the investment in families and the financial support or other help they receive through the new department of Financial Assistance will be targeted towards their transition into the labour force. He said this will mean offering a wider range of support services, from child care to training.
The current threshold for families to apply for help is too low in some cases, the minister said, noting that families with an income of CI$3,000 per month do not receive any assistance at all. While a couple might be able to manage on that income, if there are seven people in the household it is clear that family will need help. A new figure has not yet been agreed upon and may not be settled by the time the bill goes before Parliament, but Ebanks said it will increase for larger households.
“I can say the safety net will expand,” he said, stressing that conditions will be applied for able applicants who are not working. “They will be required to do something of value for the community, which may include volunteering for local non profits,” he said. At the same time the department will provide the necessary resources where there are specific difficulties, such as child care or transportation.
“So even as the social safety net widens, there will be an exchange,” Ebanks said, adding that the new system will be designed to help those who need it and target what they need, which will not be the same for all families.
He explained that over the last year 18 months, as he and his ministry team began reviewing and redesigning the system, the focus groups held by officials revealed “very different predicaments”. The families and households that are getting help are all in very different circumstances and there are gaps in the current system so that not everyone who needs help is getting it.
Ebanks told CNS he is committed to resolving a significant issue that arose during the focus groups, where older relatives are living with adult children and grandchildren. Given that the $3,000 cut-off for applications applies to an entire household, these seniors are not able to access any help at all. He said the new system must help those elderly relatives directly and consider them as their own household.
He said the legislative change was to ensure that money spent annually on direct financial assistance to those in need goes mostly to the elderly and disabled. Even though the annual budget for social assistance is currently more than $14 million, not all of those people are able to access help.
Getting the right help to the right people will mean transitioning the able-bodied into work, a major focus of the team in the new department. The disabled and elderly who need permanent assistance will no longer be required to reapply over and over for their support, thereby freeing up resources in the department to give a greatly expanded team more time to focus on helping those who can work move into the labour market.
Ebanks said the changes will create a more transparent system with clear and fair criteria for qualification and resources that are being properly targeted where they are needed. But he said the new legislation and the transition of NAU into the department of Financial Assistance are not silver bullets.
“We are not advancing the position that this is a cure-all,” he said. “This is but one component of a wider agenda that will stretch across different parts of government, but we can’t do anything else to help our people more broadly until we fix this broken system. Once we fix the application process and fix the holes in the safety net, we can start analysing what the root causes are of the poverty we are seeing and what is driving people to need help in the first place.”
Ebanks pointed to the minimum wage as another important component because if the public purse is subsidising low pay in the private sector, the money government gives to the working poor becomes corporate assistance. “We have to strengthen the safety net, while the labour department has to have the conversation about the minimum wage,” he added. “But we are not just passing another new bill. It’s part of a much wider plan.”
The immigration system, the pension regime, training and education of the local workforce, health insurance, the lack of affordable homes and the need for subsidised rental accommodation are all impacting people’s living standards, compounded now by inflation. He said these were all issues in the broader PACT plan to make life better for ordinary people.
In the meantime, after almost a decade of failure by successive governments to tackle the welfare problems Cayman has developed, the new legislation and the reshaping of the NAU into the new department addresses a significant number of the recommendations made in a 2015 report by the auditor general’s office and the findings of the Public Accounts Committee, Ebanks said.
In 2015 then premier Alden McLaughlin promised to tackle welfare reform when he took over the community affairs ministry from Osbourne Bodden, who in 2013 had also made a commitment to address the government’s growing social assistance tab, but neither of them were able to overcome the myriad challenges. However, as a former policy adviser in the community ministry, Ebanks was well equipped to do the job when he took office.
“I could already see what was wrong,” he said. But getting the legislation drawn up and overhauling the system has taken complete focus and dedication, not just by him as minister but the entire team. “It was a sustained effort,” he said, adding that there is still a way to go to roll out the much wider plan that will address the growing problems that fuel social need.
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There is no involuntary unemployment in Cayman. Take away the drunks, the junkies and the criminals from the numbers. Then you have a remaining group who have chosen not to take one of the many jobs that are available because they do not want to do those jobs. For the second category the best thing is to end welfare which disincentivises work. For the first category they don’t deserve a penny.
Make all the able-bodied people on the NAU list work. Stop their NAU money immediately and let them figure life out like the rest of us are doing.
Sure. Unless they are expatriates in which case: SEND THEM HOME!!!!
Absolutely laughable
If elderly people own land then it should be sold to support themselves. Some people ask for welfare yet have land they want to leave for their children who don’t help them.
Exactly! In every other country, assets such as property have to be liquidated to receive benefits.
11:55, that has been a major problem going back 40 years. When efforts were made to put liens on their land as security to government for loans provided, politicians, especially You Know Who, of course, stepped in and prevented it from happening.
Voldemort?
While this is a move in the right direction, a careful examination needs to be made of present and former Civil Servants etc who are CINICO beneficiaries who have adopted relatives particularly from overseas in order to come to these islands and exploit our Cayman kindness. They should be charged with fraud.
For all of you on here blaming PPM and Alden, let’s stay focused and remember that Andre Ebanks was endorsed and ran with that same PPM.
Facts. #staywoke
I thought the civil service was the social welfare system?
But really though, the minimum wage is a disgrace.
Highly unimpressed with the little this PACT government has actually been able to accomplish since cobbling together to office in the dead of the night some 18 months ago. Lip service and hot air is all I see and feel. As a Caymanian, I am very concerned by the lack of road map or development plan that addresses the country’s systemic issues in a holistic fashion. To read in an earlier report that there likely will not be a development plan until closer to election is indeed laughable. We need an updated Vision 2008 desperately – an “all hands on deck”, cross-sector road map for where the country needs to go – UNTOUCHABLE by the politicians of the day, so that when there is a new administration it is not discarded to the side or allowed to gather dust in the asbestos-laden Glass House. Until we undertake such an exercise as we did for Vision 2008, these piece meal, run to the ballot, band aid, catchy but empty ideas like this “welfare-to-work” regime will do little to quell the growing dissention that is brewing that will lead to some form of anarchy.
*dissension
A very commendable step in the right direction for the welfare system! Great work Minister Ebanks!
There are many unemployed, young, able bodied people getting Government assistance simply by providing their children’s birth certificates – this has to stop.
If they refuse to get a job or say they can’t find one – then they should be attending classes or volunteering during those hours after dropping their children to school and the children returning home 6-8 hours later!
Instead, many are driving around the island with their other unemployed friends, wasting time on the public purses’ tab.
Pull up those welfare records and filter by year of birth real quick and start there – anyone under 60 years old with no health issues or disabilities should be getting a phone call for some volunteer work, career training and drug testing within the next 60 days at least! There are probably members of the working public who would volunteer to make those phone calls if the department needs a hand.
We, Joe Public, cannot afford to foot this welfare bill any longer while many on assistance sit on the nearest wall in the lower echelons of society drinking beers for breakfast – and it is happening daily.
Go get um!
You could get Travel Cayman to make those calls – now the travel permission is automated and we have a handful in quarantine it would give them something to do.
lets cut through the waffle….
pact want to expand welfare payments/programmes cos it helps with votes and cutting cheques is easier than finding real solutions.
all the other talk about reforming the system is a smoke screen.
Unless Andre’s plan, at the outset, includes a mandatory minimum wage equivalent to a living wage, from the start it is a failure. Transitioning from assistance to permanent employment will result in self-sufficiency only if that person is receiving a wage that will allow them to become self-sufficient. Forcing people to work for the currently existing minimum wage will only serve to ensure that businesses will have a steady supply of underpaid workers, while doing little to elevate the workers. The transition from the current paltry minimum wage to a living wage must occur at the outset of this plan and not some unspecified time in the future. Whenever a politician says that government will be “analysing” an issue all too often means that they are just buying time to pass the buck to yet another administration. The red flag is where he says that “We have to strengthen the safety net, while the labour department has to have the conversation about the minimum wage.” “Conversation”!? In other words, “We will just talk about it some more rather than tackle the issue of a living wage.” Clearly, allowing less than a living wage is a significant contributor to poverty, class divisions, and a continued need for government to dole out welfare. Ebanks hit the nail squarely on the head when he pointed to the minimum wage as another important component because if the public purse is subsidising low pay in the private sector, the money government gives to the working poor becomes corporate assistance. If they do not address a living wage from the start, then–by Andre’s own criteria–they are in effect passing corporate assistance legislation. Unacceptable! It does not take more than a relatively simple analysis to arrive at what a base living wage should be. Government should already have those statistics. Once the living wage level has been established, draft and pass a Living Wage Act. This is not rocket science, folks. Andre: Get on the ball…NOW!
Welfare? Why not juts start a mandatory education of at least two years of college and refine the horrible system you have now. Caymanians would then the most educated country in the region within one generation.
Easy and quick way to get some reform indeed – they should definitely do this!!
You can force everyone to attend college if you want. Doesn’t mean they are capable or willing to put in the effort to graduate. May be more realistic to focus on not graduating people out of high school until they meet a basic standard in English and maths.
Some will be there in high school for 50 years, then, 9:09.
I don’t understand. If the minimum income for a couple to be able to live here is $3000 according to government, how come my pension plan only pays $1000 a month max?
Where is the other $2000 a month income supposed to come from for retired people?
Because the current pension plan is a scam
Well. Given your own governments failure and even refusal to understand minimum wage legislation, including the need to ratchet it up as skills and experience are gained, coupled with a work permits for all attitude, betraying the very basis of our immigration regime, we now have working Caymanians only earning CI$ 1,000 a month – with their wages artificially depressed by a mass importation of poverty. At least you were given some opportunity to save for your retirement. Many current workers will not have that luxury. All foreseeable and foreseen.
You neglected to mention that Parliament passed a law making health insurance mandatory for everyone in Cayman. If you are not covered by CINICO as a retired civil servant, “seaman”, indigent, or served two terms in Parliament, that is $5,000 per month.
The two terms for members of parliament was discontinued years ago, prior to the 2013 term. None of the legislators elected since 2013 get the defined benefit pension!
actually incorrect, the maximum income to receive welfare is $3000
7:44, Ever heard of a Ponzi Scheme? No? Now you have.
just pact lip service….reality is that they are trying to disguise blatant vote buying
Creeping socialism comes to Cayman.
Lots of unskilled work available. But if welfare pays someone more than working it’s not surprising they’d sooner stay home watching Netflix and getting stoned.
Price of weed is going through the roof bro. Can’t afford to work!
How about Panton grow some and reverse Aldarts policy of ignoring the immigration system so him and Mini Marco could collect record permit and PR fees? Or just do something.
Reshaping the system from a welfare-to-work regime is, without doubt, the right way to go. I commend the Hon. Minister Ebanks for taking that focus and initiative.
Giving well-needed assistance, where it’s necessary, aimed at taking off the training wheels to achieve self-sufficiency is the way to go.
It’s important to help those, who can’t help themselves, but not to perpetuate vicious socio-economic cycles of dependence without taking the initiative to improve one’s own position over time.
Andre, help Caymanians by raising Minimum Wage to at least $15 per hr.
Anything less is SLAVE wages in the highest cost of living country in the world.
Our governments have failed our people and rewarded the rich.
SHAME SHAME ON ALL MLAs.
Why do they care? They are raking in 15 large a month then expenses on top of that.
It won’t work as if increase minimum wages then cost living will go up as business will pass on the increase wage costs to customers!
Not really. It will just result in more automation and fewer work permits. It will curtail the importation of poverty. Caymanians will still get any jobs that are available and higher quality better paying roles will be created to support the technology.
@10:37:
Exactly! Anything less than a Living Wage encourages dependency on welfare and makes government assistance to workers a form of corporate subsidy.
When minimum wage goes up, so will the cost of goods and services being offered by those businesses who would be experiencing an over 100% increase in staffing-related expenses!
If businesses are now paying $6 per hour to a cashier – where will they find that additional $9 per hour to pay that cashier CI$15 per hour? Obviously by increasing prices!
Preschool fees, restaurant prices, groceries – the price of everything will respond to that increase and then you will be crying again for minimum wage to be CI$25 per hr!
And the cost of living will be double what it is now. Where will woody foster find that extra 7 bucks an hour for all those staff? Yes that’s right on your grocery bill you idiot.
Not true. In the UK all that happened is that the check-out tills became automated. No more salary costs, permit fees, health insurance, pension costs, maternity and sick leave. The cost of doing business actually went down.
Since most of the jobs that would be lost would be for imported working poor people, the effect would actually be positive for Cayman and Caymanians.
Like the rest of the world, most 16 to 20 yr old believe that they should be managers after 3 month of omployment. It’s not uncommon to interview a 25yr old caymanian who has had 10 different jobs and been in jail for assault, robbery or some drug related offense. But yet, they have been brainwashed to believe the expat has took their jobs…
“Like the rest of the world”??? I’ve only ever seen it here and I’ve lived in four countries.
There are plenty of jobs in Cayman. I just looked at the job sites last night. I went hotel to hotel looking at the listings. I looked at the restaurants hiring. There are over 60 accounting jobs. There are jobs in education. There are jobs in landscaping. There are nanny jobs posted. You gotta do a google search. A little initiative and you can find a job.
‘taken their jobs’…….. oh the irony!
Thank you for acknowledging the impact of the immigration system. It is a disaster. Thanks Alden!
Your politicians have only cared about their own pockets for the last decade at least.
10:45, Actually, its more like 3 decades if not more….they have consultant reports by the truckload that they ignored to prove it…..
You mean, “Thanks [for almost nothing] Alden!” To be fair, he did three significant things, which I am grateful for, to his credit; but not sure it’s the time to tell him that — maybe on my death bed.
One of those significant things, perhaps, might be more credited to the current Hon. Premier and Mr. Marco Archer!!! Mr. Archer is a national treasure!!!
A national treasure being exceedingly well rewarded financially running the Stock Exchange! Sometimes it pays to lose your seat in Parliament.
A national treasure that helped politicians sell and steel the nation’s treasures.
The nations treasures? Which are?
Can someone explain to me how there can be unemployment on this island when there are 5,000 work permit holders doing unskilled work? They apply for these jobs and they would get these jobs.
those work permit holders are being paid way less than minimum wage. A Caymanian is not going to accept that. Expat unskilled workers are sending their money to countries where the exchange rate is favourable and while living here, they pool their resources to spend as little as possible outside of their own communities. Caymanians have to spend the money they earn in Cayman. $7 per hour (although illegal) goes a lot further in other countries than it does here.
So Caymanians would rather not work than accept the low wages but they will accept charity/welfare? That makes sense?
What kind of foolishness are you spewing? Caymanians should not have to make a choice between slave wages and welfare! Government should ensure that each employee earns a living wage.
8:10, answer the question posed by 9:59.
9:59; Caymanians would rather accept the NAU’s handout than work because they get more than they would working a minimum wage job.
Most were raised that they would get a decent job because they are Caymanian, it used to be like that back in the day, because the politicians basically told them so.
Now they realize that’s not the case and they refuse to take lower paying jobs because family or friends might see and embaraass them that Bobo A is working Burger King.
I would not accept it either if the Minister is topping up my bank account every month whilst I sit at home.
Welfare to work hardly works. I live in a welfare state and once many people get on welfare they enjoy the benefits so much, they never come off. Why would they? They make more money and get more medical benefits than they would in any job they can obtain. Be careful, Cayman…..it has created a disaster up here.
Because there are people who #1 don’t want to be employed. I think they are the minority, but I have one in my family, maybe you do too. #2 there are people who think their high school education should afford them a six figure position with no experience, also two people in my family. #3 are people who are legit unemployable. They need permanent assistance. And I am all for that. But it shouldn’t be for able bodied people who are just lazy, or made poor choices to get knocked up by losers.
Because the business owners (of which have to be at least 60% owned by a Caymanian) choose not to hire their own people.
They prefer to import workers they can pay basic wages and in some cases underpay by holding the permit over their head.
Some of them are the “loudest barrels” crying down foreigners but yet they bring them in for their own benefit.
What about law firms?
What about them?
Some are criminal enterprises. Literally. The amount of fraud on immigration applications and the numbers of persons practicing Cayman Law without practicing certificates is astounding.
And thanks to Aldarts, WORCs mandate has only been the efficient processing of permits..not reviewing or enforcing the laws.
Well they aren’t even doing that well. WORC is hardly efficient!
You lost me at 60%. Fronting is rife.
So let’s get rid of the 60% if it is bogus and no one does it.
Just creates red tape and fees for law firms etc.
Not so easy, and no they would not. Many of these employers do not pay pensions, or health insurance or overtime. Further, surviving in the roles requires persons to have no dependents on Island and living (unlawfully) 10 to a home. You also cannot access banking services and loans if most of your income is tips and gratuities based.
Cayman does not have an employment problem. Cayman has a group of people who don’t want to be in employed, and I am not talking about the Lulu, Starbucks drinking lawyer wives club.
Agreed but that Club adds to the class divide that is crushing this place. They pay the same tax on their lulu and coffee as the gardener earning $6 an hour. Cayman is now implementing the most extreme form of capitalism in the world. Trump would be proud.
Your obviously crazy.
You’re !
8:40 pm. The reason we have this dire situation is all caused by our own Cayman Trump.
It will take awhile to sort out this mess. Imagine work permit holders are allowed to apply and hold Trades and Business Licenses. Can this be right? These are the problems that must be sorted out here and now. They can afford to work for less, yet have gardening services, boutiques, salons and other businesses to name a few. Government must step up and clamp down on these situations that are putting others out of business.
That is because the DCI operates its own made up definition of who is a Caymanian. Their conduct has certainly been unlawful but we don’t bother with laws around here.
Work permit holders can apply for a T&B for a company that majority owned by a Caymanian. Any assertion to the contrary is misinformation either intended to confuse or cause trouble.
Ahh, but what where the Caymanian is not really an owner, or not really a Caymanian?
The company documents will reflect the correct proportion of ownership.
Not really Caymanian, by that what do you mean?
The DCI is understood to accept Cayman Passports, or evidence of birth in Cayman, as evidence that the holder is Caymanian. Persons who are not Caymanian are erroneously given Trade and Business licenses.
You have to go to Camana Bay though to get a good look at one.