Public to pick up $17.7M tab for failed ReGen deal
(CNS): The Cayman Islands Government (CIG) has said the negotiation period for the exit agreement on the ReGen deal with the Dart Consortium expired on Friday “with several residual issues remaining unresolved”. The first of what could be more costly bills amounts to about $17.7 million, which the public purse will be paying to the consortium for work that was undertaken before a proper agreement was completed. The talks were terminated by the UPM last summer because the costs were going to be prohibitively high.
However, the government could still owe millions more, and the final tab could be as much as $55 million. The CIG has already admitted spending more than $16.5 million on consultants in relation to the deal for what was supposed to be the much-needed national integrated solid waste management system, but questions in parliament last summer suggest that there is at least another $38 million outstanding.
While politicians continue to argue where the fault lies, the auditor general made it clear in her report that a catalogue of errors was made by the previous PPM-led administration. Sue Winspear found that the deal started off badly and got progressively worse, even before the administration signed a preliminary deal for more than CI$1 billion just before the elections in 2021.
Concerns have also been raised that the CIG was attempting to offset some of these costs with land deals. The current UPM administration revealed that closed-door talks were ongoing with Dart in relation to the existing National Roads Authority Development agreement that saw the country lose a significant chunk of the West Bay Road and its associated beach access points.
The government is also conducting talks with Dart about acquiring, through swaps or purchase, land in Barkers to create an official National Park.
The government has also spent at least $27 million on capping and remediating the bulk of the landfill, which many have argued undermined its negotiation powers since this was the prime motivation for what is essentially a family-owned real estate and development company to move into the garbage business.
Dart was selected as the preferred bidder back in 2017. However, the long list of errors and the failed talks have left Cayman in a worse situation eight years later. Not only have the last two governments spent millions trying to get an integrated waste management project off the ground, but the garbage situation is now reaching a crisis as the estimated life of the Grand Cayman dump is only three or four years, and there is no new plan in the works.
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Category: Environmental Health, Government Finance, Health, Politics
CIG and DEH launched Iggy the Recycling Iguana, and a complete education programme with Wally and Ms Leslie, in 1992.
And Cayman still has not implemented recycling today.
Shameful or Purposeful
All the available Caymanian intelligence can not and will not ever be able to solve their own island wide rubbish problem. Very easy to see why.
There is a large pool on the Bluff in Cayman Brac, full of moss and harboring mosquitoes. Anyone knows what is up with that? Please tell me it is not another failed government project…
17M for the remediation seems like decent value to me. No big fires for a while. Maybe another 10 to completely finish the job once we find anew dump. 27M for a green hill is fine by me.
Capping, not remediation. They’ve been very clear on that. (I don’t blame them for that.) But its important that we are clear on what people proposing / doing. Otherwise we end up … paying for a failed ISWMS.
Incompetent individuals who will not be held responsible for their ineptitude. Sadly the people footing the bill, the same ones responsible for making a change here will likely vote the same when the time comes for real change.
PPM… bad timing. Your adds declaring “proven stable leadership” next to an article damning your leadership. Whoops.
What even more concerning, is the “new” people running with PPM. How could you align yourself with such a party with all the proof of the damages they’ve done?
Screw Dart. They’re giving my hobby a bad name and look.
Bullseye.
One of the many jewels in the pestilent and warped crown of the PPM
and people will still turn up to vote for them as if it never happened
The civil service needs urgent overhaul. We need to adapt many private sector practices to ensure a more profitable government. If you agree, write to the governor asking her to update the laws that govern the civil and public service. This cluster pluck is costing us and our future generations millions!
➨ GovernorsOffice.Cayman@fcdo.gov.uk
Don’t blame us for political decisions.
You’ve missed the point completely. It’s penalties for not continuing with the contract.
Wrong
This is absolutely unacceptable and there goes almost 20 million down the drain! And now they wanna spend 100 million on a Brac school? Why are we acting like we have all the money in the world? Caymanians should be outraged! April 30th people! Do not vote these clowns back in please! Some of that 20 million could’ve gone to the new transport system they apparently have to get foreigners to make a report on…because civil servants apparently couldn’t do it. This country is becoming a hot mess.
Becoming? its been a hot mess, no a damn joke.
any comment ppm?
any comment Mrs governor?
any comment chamber of commerce?
mount thrashmore…the perfect monument to the failures and incompetence of caymanian mla’s and their attitude towards the environment.
This is the Agreement that Alden McLaughlin, Dwayne Seymour, Julianna, and Joey Hew signed us up to just 3 weeks before the 2021 Election. This is what they are calling proven stable leadership.
Please let us not return these DONKEYS to parliament in April
The hundred million dollar fiascos will continue again with the PPM.
I still remember that day beside Kirk Home Center. All of them walking up to the stage celebrating an agreement was reached.
Little did we know!
Make them pay, sell their boats, their companies, their big houses, stop all benefits, allowances, cut salaries freeze their pensions, freeze CIG spending…
Turns out a proper agreement must have been signed, otherwise why would we be paying anything?
The article says it: services rendered before the agreement was completed.
Rendered why?
The Dump has been partially remediated by DART…so they get paid for work done so far.
Dart should not have been the ‘selected bidder’, because Dart et al has no experience with WTE, nor any facet of the problem. Here is my armchair analysis of the situation:
CNS: Read the rest of this comment here.
Turns out they needed someone willing and able to front the cash. There was no other valid option.
All Dart does is get people from overseas to do the work and then just act as a middle man, raking in all the profit for themselves and their management arm DECCO. Of course our government allows all this because it is the great and wonderful Dart organization so why question anything.
Dart and Decco are always running scams, bringing in people to do there jobs right now because they do not like the prices they get from local companies. But the government will never say anything because this is all part of the plan.
Does ANYONE get a square deal with him at all?
I’ve only heard horrible things when dealing with them.
AVOID at all costs if you can.
Wonder if Dart is considered a ‘Caymanian’ or ‘Paper Caymanian’, certainly treated differently to the rest, guess besides the Dart wealth must be where or who his status came from….ruining and bankrupting these Islands….
If you actually wonder that, you’re definitely not a Caymanian
Little slow on the sarcasm…
DG, COs and Atty Gen involved MUST answer!!
5:32. You expected Dart to work for free. Do you know what work undertaken means.
In the absence of a workable proposal or agreement, DECCO accepted the credit risk as their own. #$%@ em.
Thanks, again, to the “proven, stable leadership” decades-long shitshow known as PPM.
Don’t forget to vote strait PPM ticket and Joey for Premier with Seymour as his footstool.
Meanwhile, JuJu gets a new dress monthly paid for by the people.
New drape. Get it right.
Understand where you are at and don’t disagree with the politics, but this fat-shaming is lowball, and should be beneath us. We should be talking about what the MP’s think, and promote, not what they wear. I absolutely hate this shit and I wish it would stop.
PPM should be picking up this tab — not the Cayman people.
It’s a shame that not one soul from the PPM administration will be held accountable for signing a $1b deal right before the 2021 election. Now they’re asking us to trust them with what’s left. Voters, PLEASE do send a PPM led government into office.
Not*
They can be held accountable now, in the next election.
The PPM have brazenly teamed up with the scrapings at the bottom of the political barrel, and are not ashamed to have the likes of lazy uneducated Dumbdum , “I want to be Premier” Kenneth, plus Jujudas, Mac and inevitably Saunders.
You really want Cayman destroyed by these self seeking leeches…?
Don’t vote PPM.
Jesus christ PPM, and they got the audacity to run with the slogan of Proven, Stable, Leadership??
Now me, you, your family, everyone has to pay for the mess.
Don’t think because your portion is not coming directly out of your bank account, you are no paying for it. You will soon feel it in the overall cost of living, hidden behind all the fees we pay to government as car license fee, stamp duty, school fees etc., every single fee you pay, but higher!
From our pockets to Dart’s because of PPM and some fools will still run and vote for them come Apr 30.
Add this to the GT revitalization project, the Points system, the sale of Pageant Beach and the cruise piers they so desperately wanted. All “dependable” PPM initiatives.
Plus failed transport system
Failed Barbados route
Actually, 1:38pm, McTaggart ruined the Barbados deal. Kenny was pi$$ed and rightly so.
In that case, thank you Roy, you saved us Millions in ongoing expenditure.
A modular waste to energy plant, in the $100K – $500K range, seems more appropriate.
If you can find one at that price, do let us know
Seems we already have such a thing in central George Town, but the damn thing only works in reverse. In the reactor building known as “The House” energy from the hot air of our elected MPs cake holes is turned into waste.
This waste is rather costly for Cayman as it piles up in the form of unnecessary education facilities on the Brac, brick pavement in George Town and Barber Green to nowhere just to name a few instances.
If only we could get some genius engineers to figure out how to get it to work the way it should
All that time and money and they have to stand yellow signs on the brick to warn cars that it is a crossing for pedestrians….wha???
That’s how much a used municipal glass crusher costs – also too expensive for DART!
How can I, as a voter, have any confidence that the CIG can successfully manage something as complex as building a cruise ship port? This is embarrassing. The one project where spending more and taking on debt might actually have been worth it—and they can’t get it over the line.
Don’t worry 3.01.
They’ll borrow another $450Million in our name and retire fat and rich while we pay their debts.
The pier loan repayments will be
$2.11Million each Month.
We’ll be paying $25Million every year for 30 years.
That money could be spent on better education, hospital upgrades, not wasted off Island.
Thanks, PPM. The contract they saddled us with three weeks before leaving office had more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese and for what? Just to be able to say that “it was signed while we were in office”? Same bull manure as Julianna trying to saddle us with a multi-million school. We cannot put their a$$ in jail, but we can vote them out of parliament.
Why can they not be put in jail?
Because they can only commit a crime if they themselves think a law is applicable to them.
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men (and/or women) in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” -Frederick Bastiat
Gross negligence that should be indemnified by the ministers who signed this… Inching their territory and its people closer and closer to bankruptcy.
That is the penalty for electing incompetents last election. I am praying that we will not repeat that mistake in April.
2:18 pm The PPM left us with this mess. Do not come here trying to blow smoke up any one’s donkey!
I believe that act is illegal in all of the Queen’s/King’s territories.
Depends on the methodology utilised.
Do we care that DART received billions in crown land, and still have not honored their side of the NRA deal? Claw it back for non-performance.
Billions in crown land?
I know you fool too.
Cancel the Brac School and Stranton Park renos, for starters.
The CIG should countersue the PPM party for these costs. They improperly and negligently bound these islands to yet another half-baked agree to agree fiasco with their client donor.
A perfect demonstration of government incompetence with zero accountability.
Need to dust off the plans for the lined engineered landfill in BT. You can then use methane recapture to support a small power generating station on site that can be used to power battery operated garbage trucks. This is not new and has been done in other jurisdictions. Permanently cap and close MT Trashmore.
Yet the spending will continue.
Kenneth playgrounds ..$20Million
Kenneth terminal $45Million
New Prison $200 Million
Piers $450 Million.
Current debt. $ 500 Million.
We can’t afford PPM spending our money to keep them living like Royalty.
Are there any words left to describe these arrogant, self serving morons and the people who voted for them and destroyed these Islands. They should be held accountable and serving prison sentences.
There sure is, every time Dwayne Seymour opens his mouth.
Jail the lot of them!!!
And for a start do not vote for any of them on April 30. An utter disgrace.