CIG made shocking list of errors in $1B waste project
(CNS): From the moment the government began exploring options for a new waste management system, it failed the people of the Cayman Islands with a shocking list of errors on what would have been the most costly infrastructure project embarked on in these islands. A damning leaked report by the Office of the Auditor General shows how the public-private partnership with Dart, known as ReGen, started off badly and got progressively worse, even before the PPM-led administration signed a more than CI$1 billion preliminary deal with the islands’ wealthiest landowner.
The catalogue of errors led Auditor General Sue Winspear to conclude that the project for a waste-to-energy facility and related elements was far from value for money.
The OAG report, The Integrated Solid Waste Management System for the Cayman Islands, was leaked last week shortly after Sustainability Minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks announced that the government was pulling out of the deal. In it, Winspear detailed where things went wrong and why the CIG now faces the problem of starting over, more than twelve years after it reneged on a tender awarded to a conventional contractor in 2011.
The government’s historical management of this project has proved to be disastrous.
The OAG has detailed how the latest attempt at a modern waste management project failed largely because, from the very start, the data used to shape the process was either missing, inaccurate or based on incorrect assumptions. At almost every turn officials made mistakes or failed to make the necessary reviews, calculations and assessments to protect the public purse.
The government made fundamental mistakes throughout. It even failed to set out clear objectives at the start of the project process and miscalculated the amount of waste the islands actually generate. The OAG found that the government also wasted millions of dollars on consultants in preparing the project.
A major flaw in the early stages was the CIG’s failure to understand that a public-private partnership is still a loan and, even worse, did not properly assess whether or not a PPP would be more costly than a conventional contract.
However, even without certain information that the ministries involved failed to supply, the OAG was able to calculate that the PPP ended up being far more costly than a conventional public contract between the government and a waste-management expert. The decision to proceed with a PPP rather than a direct tender with a relevant contractor, for which the government borrowed the money directly or used its own funds, would have added around $200 million to the bill.
While many of the flaws, failings and problems on this project were with the upfront contract for building the waste-to-energy facility and establishing the reuse, recycling and composting elements on the site, the report also identifies a list of problems throughout the contract’s life and day-to-day operation.
The OAG found that the government was carrying most of the risk on the project throughout its life, which undermined the decision to enter into a PPP. The CIG also utterly failed to ensure it could properly regulate and inspect the facility.
In a press release issued last week, the OAG said it had released the report to parliament on Tuesday, 30 July. The office had planned to publish the report, but because it contained some commercially sensitive information, it was not releasing it until redactions had been made. However, the report was leaked on 1 August.
The auditor general explained in the release that her office had undertaken the audit report of the ReGen project at the request of the PACT administration in August 2021, just after it took office. In December 2021, the OAG provided a draft of the report to the governor, premier, deputy premier and senior civil servants. However, she noted that the government did not provide a management response to confirm the accuracy or clarify the content.
Nevertheless, the OAG agreed that the government could use it to assist with the renegotiation of the contract prior to financial close and, therefore, would not publish the report at the time.
“The OAG subsequently advised on several occasions over the last few years that we would publish our original report, together with an update, when the ReGen contract reached financial close,” Winspear stated in the release.
After the government announced that it was pulling out of the deal, the OAG sent the report to parliament and initially planned to release it to the public at that time, but the CIG requested that its publication be delayed due to the commercially sensitive information it contained.
“The OAG does not publish reports with commercially sensitive information and usually redacts such information before issuing reports to parliament and publishing them,” the office stated, adding that the government was now committed to providing a response to the OAG by mid-August. The office said that at that time, it would publish the report after assessing and redacting commercially sensitive information and updating any factual inaccuracies.
However, with dozens of civil servants and all 19 MPs in possession of the report, it was leaked in full, giving the public the first detailed look at the catalogue of errors spreading across at least three administrations.
See the report in the CNS Library.
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Category: Environmental Health, Government Administration, Government oversight, Health, Politics
Incompetence is the foundation of many a successful career in the upper echelons of CIG. It is not considered a negative factor at all and is used as a tool to hide acts of official corruption.
This surely becomes an issue of national importance now? Surely this has to become a matter for the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in the UK? Governor, we have an unlined, cancer-causing disaster plopped right in the middle of our largest Island and disaster is the right term for it.
Any other Western Nation on Earth central government would be stepping in as a state emergency akin to a train derailment and chemical spill.
It’s clear this isn’t a task for our elected Parliament (should have stayed as MLAs as the upgrade gives these clowns too much credibility) so it’s time the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and Governor’s office step in to get this remediated once and for all.
And then investigate the rampant corruption that is on par with BVI and TCI rather than pretending it doesn’t exist because it would make for bad optics in the colonies.
LOL, They can’t manage their own finances. Read the latest economic news from the UK.
Just imagine how much more efficient and richer this country would have been if we could have Sue Winspear elected to Parliament and made Prime Minister!.
Great reporting CNS ! Now let us move to the even more dead deal with Warstila regarding the Utility Grid Storage Deal for solar power.
That deal crafted under the PACT government has stopped even twitching right after it was announced and should make quite tickle the funny bone of whomever reads it !
Direct rule wouldn’t have the desired effect unless there are deep changes to who can run for public office ! The present set is without the shadow of a doubt clearly out of place and better suited for judging twerking competitions or is that organizing donkey races ? One can only wonder .
CIG nowadays is more akin to a welfare system than a meritocracy capable of tackling the many challenges that the island faces , be it Mount Trashmore , the lack of implementation of the energy policy which struggles to translate into reality thanks to OfReg being nothing less than a captive agency being held hostage by the very same companies it is supposed to regulate over!
What Wartsila deal are you talking about?
Hope the Governor conducts an investigation as to who leaked this report.
How naive people are…
I hope the police conduct an investigation as to why this all happened, and did not come to light years ago.
The public deserved to see the report.
PPM has a lot to answer for. First, the four MPs were elected on a ticket of no dump in Bodden Town which was completely disingenuous. Now we discover that the government of Alden McLaughlin and Roy McTaggart were commercially and economically illiterate.
Shame on Alden, Roy and PPM.
If you didn’t know they were commercially and economically illiterate before, you should have known it from years ago when Roy admitted in parliament that they had no idea how many tens of millions they gave away in concessions to ultra-wealthy developers. Oh, but don’t worry though – they’ll hire the occasional Caymanian bellhop. Trickle down economics and all that.
Dart got what he wanted out of the negotiations – they have the side of the dump facing Camana Bay covered with grass now
One new building has already gone up in front of the building that houses Dart’s local office, and they are currently constructing another building there as well
Their primary concern was limiting the impact of the dump on Camana Bay and Dart’s future developments
They also got a piece of land swapped to them that has no relation to the actual dump site, but fills a ‘hole’ in their expansion plans where there was a government parcel and Dart on either side of it. (See Exhibit 4 of the report, the table of land swap parcels, on p. 16 of the repot / p.20 of the PDF in CNS archive link.https://cnslibrary.com/garbage/)
Corruption is rife. Cayman needs to change the governance apparatus of who is allowed to run for office, handle money, develop policy, and self-indemnify. The supervisors of governance need to have resources to properly enforce their remit and serve the justice we might expect, given the circumstances. There need to be arrests and prison sentences. There’s no 6 year time limit on criminal conspiracies and financial crimes.
Nothing new or shocking business as usual in these parts ! has the governments of these islands ever got value for money on a project please remind me of one .
direct rule now!
Are you following what is happening in the UK?
Yes and it happening here too, it’s called indigenous population dilution. Population overgrowth is also coming to a head here. The decrepit infrastructure cannot handle the load. Civil unrest will follow inevitably.
Are you sure?
British public warned of $28bn financial black hole.
UK public spending is on track to go £22 billion ($28 billion) over budget by this year due to Tory financial mismanagement, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, told parliament on Monday.
Warning of the need to make “difficult decisions,” the chancellor announced an immediate £5.5 billion ($7 billion) of cuts, promising a further £8.1 billion ($10.4 billion) spending decrease for the next financial year. Reeves also announced above-inflation pay rises for public sector workers costing some £9.1 billion ($11.7 billion). Tory policies had sparked worker strikes in several areas of the public sector for years.
“They ducked the difficult decisions. They put party before country. The reserve spent more than three times over, only three months into the financial year, and they told no one,” Reeves said in the House of Commons. “The scale of this overspend is not sustainable. Not to act is simply not an option,” she added.
Reeves’ Conservative predecessor Jeremy Hunt has accused the new chancellor of laying the groundwork for breaking her pre-election promises and raising taxes.
Today’s exercise is not economic, it’s political. She wants to blame the last Conservative government for tax rises and project cancellations she has been planning all along,” Hunt has said.
The new Labour government inherited a UK economy with stagnant growth and the highest level of public sector net debt since the early 1960s. The country’s ratio of public sector net debt to gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated to be at 99.5% in late June, according to the Office of National Statistics bulletin. GDP is expected to grow by 0.7% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund’s July economic outlook update
☝🏼Be careful what you wish for.
The UK’s new Labour government has inherited the worst economy since the Second World War, the newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has said. Reeves took charge of the country’s finances after Labour won 412 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons in last week’s general election, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule.
“I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the Second World War,” Reeves said in a speech at the Treasury on Monday, July 10,2024 b
“We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility,” she added, accusing her Tory predecessors of acting out of “political self-interest” as part of a “government that put party first, country second.”
New Treasury analysis that I requested over the weekend shows that, had the UK economy grown at the average rate of other OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] economies this last 13 years, our economy would have been over £140 billion [$179 billion] larger,” Reeves said. She claimed that Tory policies effectively cost the UK budget £58 billion ($74 billion) in lost tax revenue in 2023 alone.
“That’s money that could have revitalized our schools, our hospitals, and other public services,” the new chancellor said. “Growth requires difficult choices – choices that previous governments have shied away from.”
Reeves vowed to end “political timidity” in the UK’s “antiquated planning system,” and promised reform while staying committed to “no increases in National Insurance, and the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.”
According to The Guardian, the UK’s deficit has reached the highest level since the 1960s under more than a decade of Conservative governments, while the country was badly affected by “shocks including Brexit, the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis.”
The International Monetary Fund projected in early July that the UK’s GDP will grow by 0.5% this year.
if you read the report the AG recommended that the Government continue to negotiate with Dart and try to get a better deal.
that is exactly what the team did. when a better deal could not be realised the Minister pulled the plug.
Thank you AG, civil Service and Minister.
Like pigs to the trough! These politicians from both parties are absolutely disgusting. They don’t give a flying F about their country! They’re only interested in how they can enrich themselves!
Who was the person lamenting that all of Joey’s hard work was going to waste? Care to comment on the utility of all that “hard work.” Thank goodness they stopped this project before all that hard work cost us more than a hundred million dollars and got us in deep water with the UK!
Joey is an idiot and has again been exposed as a buffoon who is controlled by developers like Dart. His video demonstrates the lengths he will go to fool the public. It was his usual theatrics pretending he didn’t know about the terms of the ReGen deal from 2013-2021 and the mess that PPM created as the government from day one.
These same characters are boasting about how clever they are hiding KYD$2.1 billion from the UK to retain FFR compliance.
Shocked but not surprised by all this. The result is that Cayman is left with the embarrassment/disgrace/environmental liability that is the dump for another goodness-knows-how-many years while this/future governments go back (repeatedly?) to square one, each trying to address their own voters’ geographical concerns. And this won’t be the first infrastructure project CIG has pulled out of that I can think of. What reputable, competent provider would want to do a deal with CIG now?
Politicians are not technocrats and come with varying skills and competence levels. The Chief Officers (civil servants) are the ones charged with ensuring that all processes are carried out according to the legislation passed by Parliament and thus elected politicians (Ministers) should be able to have a measure of trust and expectation of the competence of the staff charged with leading/overseeing these types of major infrastructure projects. The alarming incompetence at the civil service level and the responsible Minister and Cabinet illustrated by this report is frightening! What will happen with the proposed cargo port in Breakers, re-tendering of this solid waste disposal project, hospital expansion, Brac high school, or any other major infrastructure project? Will this story of sheer incompetence and cost to this country repeat itself? Oh, I forgot the Mental Health Facility in East End.
Who was the Minister of Health during the 2017-2021 reign of the PPM and who was this Minister’s Chief Officer?
I can say with some certainty that there never was a government with much competence in the last 40 years. The geniuses in charge now are possibly the dumbest bunch ever and I would be afraid of any major decisions on infrastructure they make.
Is it any surprise based on the pool of MLAs? Majority are incompetent, corrupt or uneducated. Some are definitely all three. You get what you vote for. Hardworking, honest Caymanians deserve better.
Hardworking, honest Caymanians… Now that is a rare breed, and I’m Caymanian!
Honest, hardworking Caymanians could do better but won’t. Let’s start with changing the constitution to allow those eligible status holders to apply. People with a brain and ambition and not tied to any family and old allegiances or business contacts. Disqualifying completely any member with a criminal conviction. Redrawing the quite ludicrous constituency boundaries. Fed up hearing about honest, hardworking Caymanians. They are the ones with the key to the shambles that is CIG and politics on Cayman but they won’t open the door. Suck it up!
Status holders through wealth will do better? Stop joking.
@4:27AM, Why do you expats want us to change our laws so bad.. go run for politics in your own country.. sick of the disgusting entitled attitude a lot of you have
When the jurisdiction (not an actual country) is run by invalids, this is what you get. You get what you vote for…
PPM messed up this project the process with dart from day one. The mismanagement by the civil service compounded matters. There is nothing world class about the politicians and civil service in Cayman
Speaking of more recent shocking errors,
how about the decision of OfReg to attempt to prevent the sale of Starlink receivers by local retailers? Why would they take such an anti-competitive stance that forces consumers to continue to sky high prices for crap services?
I doubt that they even have authority to do this pursuant to Part 13 of the Act but then when has that ever stopped OfReg from doing anything – or nothing – when they should be doing something – after all it is our money that they are wasting not theirs and there is no accountability in relation to anything that OfReg does is there?
https://legislation.gov.ky/cms/images/LEGISLATION/PRINCIPAL/2016/2016-0049/UtilityRegulationandCompetitionAct_2024%20Revision.pdf
Yes, ridiculous.
At least Starlink is reliable, unlike the on-island options.
Thank you Ms Winspear!!! Ms Wilks decision is therfore justified and accurate.
Yet they continued on for years before pulling the plug?
ALL ARE USELESS! What hope is there for Cayman with the leaders we have?
No she has to go, PPM forever! Only Mr Dart can get us a great deal and fix the dump. I say let us become an independent country under the Dart umbrella. He can own all business and get us terrific deals.
This is terrific idea because look what a great job the Dart people always do. He is our savior.
Another massive disaster of a project almost forced upon this nation by the PPM
Almost every single project backed by them gets stuck in a quagmire and ends up being delivered late, usually for much more money than they claimed
Whether it’s the construction of Alden’s famous shambolic High Schools, years late and tens of millions overbudget – reminder those schools were meant to be constructed for $60 million and ended up being something in the range of $200 million and took 15 YEARS
or the Airport upgrades which went millions overbudget and which we are currently in procurement for further upgrades which need to be done in a few years because for all the money they the PPM wasted basically just put a band-aid on the situation and did the bare minimum, reminder the total cost for the runway and terminal upgrades was meant to be 100 million and they ended up somewhere in the range on 120 million
and who could forget them trying to force their decades long contract for a foreign owned cruise port on us – while handwaving away the fact that it would have likely destroyed the main feature that attracts tourists here pristine beaches and the natural environment.
The complete collapse of this dump project which this government has been trying to resurrect over the past 3 years is another shining jewel in the PPM’s Crown of colossal failures
I thank God every day that the PPM are out of Government – and I hope they never return
UDP bot
Nothing would make me happier than personally slamming the Doors of Paliament in Mckeeva’s face myself if I had the opportunity once he steps down or is hopefully voted out
Just because I can take an accurate accounting of the PPM’s consistent failures over 20 years doesn’t mean I support the national embarrassment that is Mckeeva
Cayman will be all the better off when both Alden and Mckeeva go sailing off into the sunset
PPM have proven to be a bigger sham and arguably more reckless with public funds than UDP.
Let’s agree they are the same and confirmed this by joining forces to create the Government of National Unity where Alden and McKeeva became the joint leaders.
UDP will royally trump all of that if we let them continue to run rampant with their whimsical projects and blatant misuse of position, power and public purse… school, houses for the builders, move governor and ruin governors beach, park in Scranton, cruise port, cargo port, EWA, “edits” to the environmental act, pay rises in any shape or form to the voting masses. Big Mac and Big D’s twin towers plans, planned development and construction, etc. Still with increasing demand once population reaches 250,000 (listen to the experts projections and see slides from press conference).
And yet even knowing everything in the AG’s report, we still hear only crickets from the direction of the Governor.
Only if people realised that the same players come back seemingly absolved of their dastardly past, rebranded under a different party. Don’t just boycott the party, boycott the bad players!
Will those responsible for this major f’up in CIG be fired or reprimanded? Not likely, they’ll most likely be promoted, re elected or start bogus companies partnering with others to bid on the next dump beautification project. However all is quite on the Western Front as the details about penalty for breaking the deal are yet to be revealed. Get ready to bend over everyone the next leak about this project is going to hurt.
I’m not forming an opinion until the AG officially releases the report. The last time a report was leaked it would found to contains errors.
Remember you are reading a one sided report which has not been fact checked.
Wow! Talk about delusional! You’re still desperately clinging onto the idea that the whole dump deal wasn’t either a shambolic disaster or a massive con. Terrifying either way.
Who pray tell do you think is going to give you a better detailed report that the AG – who has through her service here done nothing but a stellar job and is completely impartial on this and all matters she undertakes?
She isn’t even from Cayman what reason would she have for writing a ‘one sided report’ against the Government?
The report may not have been cleared by the Civil Service for factual accuracy but all OAG reports are written based on the evidence received. It won’t be one-sided as they are apolitical and conclude purely based on the assessment of the evidence they have.
When the truth hurts, it’s not an error.
Fired?
Not prosecuted?
The levels of Maladministration may well be criminal.
Cayman needs all new blood in government – Everyone that has been in more than 1 term needs to go. Maybe one or two literally have done anything useful. Please Cayman for the sake of the future of these islands get these incompetent officials out of office this election. I would also suggest the newly elected take a hard look at all your high level administration arm as they also seem to be highly inept at the job they were hired to do.
LTD da Unboozler
There ISN’T ONE person qualified.
Headline should read “CIG made as many terrible errors as we’d expect them to”
There’s nothing “shocking” about it except that we still allow such incompetence. It’s unreal how bad our politicians are, but so are many chief officers and senior policy folks and technical staff etc.
CIG is an absolute disgrace and it’s only in spite of CIG that the private sector keeps this country from imploding on itself. SMFH
You think they were mistakes?
Morons in charge for 30 years! No clue how to negotiate, only familiar with the “kickback” system.
Charges for wasting public funds? Yeah right! No accountability, business as usual!!
Disgusting!!
Why did PPM sign the midnight deal with Dart then? Didn’t they know it was not a great deal for us?
Maybe because it benefited certain people in high places.
Ask MLA Joey Hew who claimed this was a great deal and project. What an idiot! No education, no sense everything he touches is riddled in scandal and allegations of kick backs.
He will make a perfect new leader for the ppm given their track record scandals and waste of public funds.
Joey Who?
Follow the money…always follow the money and try to understand who they finance all year round but especially at elections.
Kickbacks, benefits, perks, the mighty $$$$$.
This can not be true because the great & wonderful Dart organization would never think of taking advantage of the people of the Cayman Islands. Miss Sandy of Marl Road said Dart was only doing a wonderful thing for us.
Guess Miss Sandy made a small mistake mate.
This not the first time she is all about pay to play
Notice how she has stopped hitting the Compass and Reshma since Dart took over?
Or how she is anti-cannabis thanks to the Health City sponsorship. Or theatrically anti-solar/pro-utility monopoly thanks to the CUC sponsorship. Or evidently pro-obesity/heart disease thanks to the Burger King sponsorship. Etc etc etc.
Dart only cares about Dart and all the over rated foreigners that they are loaded up with. We need to stop trying to get into bed with them every chance they get.
Helps to have a monthly contract with Dart. JD knows how to keep her name clean so pay for protection
From the same people who gave you Clifton Hunter HS, John Grey HS, the airport redo, Cayman Air, The Turtle Farm now this. There is absolutely no reason to think a new cargo terminal, airport expansion, Brac HS or cruise berthing pier will ever be built on time, or on budget. Perhaps worst of all ZERO accountability. In the next election remember, you get what you voted for 🤔🤔🤔
Yeah but CIG runs the best 5K on the planet!
It’s world class!
Franz’s world class civil service screws up again with no accountability
All of these projects created the potential for lucrative side deals – the more they are over budget or have to be re-negotiated – the richer certain politicians get.
Before people start blaming PPM click on the blue letters in CNS report “reneged on a tender rewarded”. This happened under McKeeva Bush and the UDP. It was McKeeva who went against the CTC’s recommendations to use the US based company.
One scum more scummy than the other scum?
Grow up.
If we were French we would be in the streets yelling “off with their heads.” The levels of incompetence are probably criminal, and verge on treasonous.
Except the actual procurement for the project we are referring to currently occurred under the PPM, and the PPM were the ones that announced DART as the preferred bidder for that procurement and signed the Public Private Partnership with them
The Auditor General notes in her report that the REGEN proposal arose out of the PPMs policies and attempts to set up waste management
So – what Mckeeva did in 2011 has little to do with what the PPM did between 2016-2021 which is when the majority of the Solid Waste Management debacle was occurring.
Honorable Bush for Premier, we love you!
The AG actually has a timeline for the process of the Solid Waste Management project included in her report on page 14, which you would know, if you had bothered to even look at it
The 2011 actions of Mckeeva have absolutely nothing to do with the Regen proposal which occurred and was negotiated entirely by the PPM starting in December of 2013
And since you seem to have a bit of trouble with your history – Mckeeva was deposed in 2012 and in May of 2013 the PPM won a majority so the UDP was leading any government for any section of the project we are scrutinizing currently – so the entire process from start to 2021 occurred under your beloved and incompetent PPM
Facts don’t care about your feelings
Game. Set. Match.
well done 12:43
I think the point made is that there would have been no ReGen fiasco had Big Mac not inappropriately interceded with the Wheelabrator selection in 2011.
This doesn’t excuse the ReGen issues, by the way. I think both events highlight the problems with having politicians directly interfere with the work carried out by the civil service, rather than to set the policy priorities and agenda.
…and the Governor smiled, the Commissioner said the crime situation was stable, and the DG said we were #worldclass.
Thank God for Sue!
Wait, are you sure you haven’t got this mixed up? Alden and crew messed up the entire ReGen deal but McKeeva did renegue on the original government contract for the port way back when. They’re all as bad as each other. Wayne and Andre are the only two I have ever seen showing any morals and good principles.