Premier says civil service must stop growing
(CNS): Premier Wayne Panton has said the civil service headcount cannot continue to grow at the current pace and that a request for 1,100 new posts in the upcoming budget would not be fulfilled. He said there would be no job cuts in this coming spending plan and that the government finances remain solid, but the public sector needs to be more efficient and improve its overall performance.
Appearing on Radio Cayman’s morning talk show, Panton said, “The country is not broke; people are not losing their jobs, and people are not having their salaries cut.” But he added there would not be more than 1,000 new civil servants being employed either.
One of PACT’s broad policy goals is to modernise government, and speaking to Orrett Connor, the host of For the Record, Panton said that technology would help to deliver public services more efficiently without having to “throw bodies” at ever-growing departments.
“We want to make sure that the wider public service… all work together efficiently,” he said. “There is no doubt that government can be modernised and can be improved. It’s always an evolutionary process.”
The premier said innovation and technology offered opportunities to deliver services more efficiently. “We can’t continue to grow the civil service. This is one of the challenges that we’ve had… We can’t just keep throwing bodies at roles. We have to figure out a process… for a leaner civil service,” Panton added.
The government currently employs around 4,500 people, and Panton said that the government must move away from “social hiring”. He said the civil services needs enough people to deliver its services efficiently, not just to give people a job. Instead, the government would help people who need work to find solid employment in the private sector.
The premier said that PACT was working on helping Caymanians get well educated and qualified so that they could take up the work that is available in the local economy, noting that this administration was investing heavily in scholarships so local people could get ahead.
Talking about the memo he had circulated recently asking civil servants to cut spending in the face of growing demands on government resources, he said this was not because the CIG was in any significant financial trouble but because there were many priorities to juggle, and year-on-year, the budget is increasing by around CS$100 million. Panton noted that the memo was meant to send a message not to spend money where it was not really needed.
The race to spend every penny in an annual budget by ministries is misguided, he added, because departments would not “lose their budget” if they don’t spend it all, and the public sector will get the money it demonstrates it needs. “I’m trying to manage expectations… to put some pressure.”
“Every time we consider a budget, the requests are always a hundred, two hundred million dollars more than realistically what we should be doing,” Panton said.
In 2022, the original fixed budget of CI$920 million was increased through authorised supplementary appropriations by CI$98 million. But in the end, only CI$51 million of that additional cash was spent. Panton said that reflected the fact that requests for money were being made by various ministries that were not really needed, and the government had to be better at budget control.
Panton expects that by the end of this year the government will have spent more than the budget of CI$950 million for 2023. “How much more is our challenge, and that is why I am trying to control the spending,” he said. While the ongoing budget process is not about cutting jobs, it is also not about adding them, he noted.
He said that in this year’s budget, there are requests for around 1,100 new posts. “We cannot have 1,100 new posts,” he said, pointing out that he was not even sure where they could put so many people, and ways had to be found to reduce those numbers. “We have to manage these things.”
He warned this was where things were getting unsustainable. “We cannot continue to grow the civil service to a drastic extent. We have got to find ways of keeping government as lean as possible but remain effective.”
Panton said the current budget discussion was around these numbers and the need to stop the growth, and it is important that government remains as prudent as possible with spending. The elected members have an obligation to manage public resources that are applied effectively to help the greatest number of people possible, the premier told the listening audience.
He said there were other challenges regarding public expenditure, especially the money spent on providing healthcare for local people. This, he said, was another reason why PACT wanted the community to take the concept of wellness seriously, be healthier and take better care of themselves.
He said it was cheaper to help people stay healthy than to spend money on drugs and medical intervention once they become sick. Reducing the demand for medical care would also help in the goal of making the annual budget more sustainable, and allow the government to invest in education and social support and help to improve the quality of life for all while still delivering the necessary services.
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Category: Government Administration, Politics
In order for any sitting government to accomplish any changes to the structure to the civil service you would need to do a complete overhaul of the entire senior management of the civil service from the DG down. None of them are anywhere close of being able to run the Ministries they have, just simply sitting there collecting big fat paychecks and waiting on retirement. In order for the civil service to work/function properly hard decisions have to be made and none of these current clowns are ever going to do that.
Translation: We will continue spending so we have to import foreign labour to get more revenue so we can expand civil service to cope with the higher population.
And build more roads, more schools, more buildings, more condos and all at the expense of the environment. Our way of life has changed for the worst.
This is all political pandering – come on Wayne you can do better. You can’t control your own government ministers! You know dam well that the number is not 1000 and you are playing a game to sensationalize this to make it look like you are doing something when you know you are not. Your own office can’t get your team to come to work and members of your team are M.I.A
Stop trying to fool people!
you have civil servants that be on their cell phone all day, that’s what they get paid for.
Go into the back offices of any civil service department like DVDL, police records etc and they are drowning in boxes of paper forms filled out and thrown into boxes in no particular order.
Calculate the cost of employees sat at desks issuing paperwork as well as materials / ink etc. Where as the rest of the world is automated with no human interaction required to obtain a licence, passport, insurance etc. In Cayman, it’s a job creating exercise to provide low level jobs employment to those Caymanians that can’t be MLa’s, lawyers and accountants.
Automate these roles to gain efficiency would create mass unemployment. And there in lies Cayman dilemma.
The biggest thing the government could do to get rid of the dead wood in the civil service is to get rid of the gold-plated benefits packages that prevent people (good or bad) leaving.
Free healthcare for life would be a great place to start. There is a reason no business in the world offers that: it would be financial suicide.
This might allow some attrition that would naturally shrink the numbers of civil servants and bring in much needed new blood. Right now, it is almost impossible for anyone with a family to ever leave the CS as no private sector employer will match the benefits.
Get rid of the numerous septuagenarian expats that seem to cling onto their jobs. We all know them.
Outdated, stale and should have been put out to pasture years ago.
They’re not expats anymore. Guess who allowed that to happen.
Spot on. With free medical, the abuse is rampant. For a pain in their 6th toe (being funny) civil servants go to hospital and get loaded with panadol- FOR FREE, when same meds are available OTC for $5 or less.
Wait till you see the monthly payroll 😂
Cutting the number of MPs from 19 to 7 would set a good example.
MP’s are not civil servants unfortunately..
That is a terrible idea for so many reasons.
4,500 government employees? Where did that number come from? in 2008 the total number of people employed by government (have to include authorities, etc.) was 7,000. Must be 10,000 now. As a ratio of the population and private work force, it’s gigantic. As is the budget.
They hived a lot of them off in a sleight of hand called “agencies”, NRA, OffReg, CIAA. They all feed at the same trough.
One area CIG can reduce expenditure is merging Public Transport with Dept. of Vehicles & Driver Licenses, now that they are under the same Ministry. The services will be at the same location, reduce accommodation expense and make the registration process for Public Transport Vehicles more efficient.
So the population can grow, and the number of new ministries and departments can grow, and the number of place in public schools can grow, and the amount of trash being produced can grow, and Ministers can add new projects (but they never kill any projects that are ongoing), but the size of the civil service can’t grow? Got it.
you are correct…but the waste and incompetence of the civil service cannot continue.
the real question is…what number of civil servant do we need for a population of 60-70k?
the answer is easily available by looking at other similar sized places
It can’t continue but you can bet your ass it will.
Too many Ministries and Departments have people who don’t work.
Again, take a good hard look at the number of ‘government’ vehicles in use and more importantly how they are used. There is huge money to be saved here.
Not all Civil Servants are equal. Some do the work of two or three, and then some barely work and brag about it.
Others get paid to take training courses and collect degrees.
Sort out the good from the bad and deal with the bad.
The work of two or three in the civil service is a part time role in the real world.
Cut the politicians salary then he can afford to hire people. He forgot about the hiring freezes that has been going on since 2008. People are stressed and overworked trying to fill 4 different roles. The cuts need to be at the top because they don’t do anything anyway. Just have meetings and over work the under paid people at the bottom.
Bear in mind that this is only what Wayne wants to make public, behind the scenes the financial position of the CIG is much, much worse. When the government is constituted of leaders that couldn’t even manage a yard sale the problems start right at the top.
Giving up on the aspiration of increasing the population would be a good start. Some expats are required still, as the experience within the cig is what is massively lacking but quality over quantity should be applied across the board.
If the financial and legal services industry starts to pull their footprint from the islands, as is currently happening, coupled with a slow down in development, then the cig need to be prepared for austerity. The reality is that a saving money and efficiency approach has never been attempted by successive governments and the reality check is going to be harsh at best.
I think that maybe they need to retract that huge salary increase they gave themselves, “two days” after election. They blamed Aldin but they could have used discretion and decided not to follow through at that time as we could not afford it. But no, not them they’re smiling all the way to the bank and now talking BS about cutting spending!!!! Well Mr Premier/ Finance Minister start by cutting a percentage from those huge salaries you all are being paid each month.
@9:28pm Had Alden and the PPM had never voted the raise in first place, this would never had been an issue..
Wayne the cost of living in the Cayman Islands is through the roof an it’s not getting any easier. Most people are eating anything cheap just to make ends meet and putting more hours in at work due to the increase drive for businesses to make more profits. Its a double edge sword you are selling. Why not consider the following,
1. Loose the EW extension bypass.
2. It’s time for the 1000 expats in government to look at other employers
3. Pay cuts for all elected members
4. Implement a rental oversight committee
5. Implement an oversight committee on construction materials
6. Implement higher taxes on imported vegetables, fruits , etc
7. Mandate supermarkets to support local farmers
You live in a dream world.
Great ideas. Let’s make already extortionate fruit and vegetable prices more expensive for the benefit of a couple local farmers “loose” the bypass and get the government members to cut their own pay. Genius!
The growth of the Civil service and other facilities is linked to the increasing population and the need for services.
So how is he going to solve this issue?
No. The Civil Service is growing to provide more foreign nationals to bring in more foreign nationals with employment and opportunity. At great expense to the Caymanian people. Computers and joined up thinking could more than halve the personnel required. This destruction of Cayman is intentional.
I swear Franz is afraid of technology. Everything is two and three times more complicated than it needs to because it is all done by slow people.
For a start, how about getting the current employees in the civil service to actually do their jobs for once ?
Solve? If they don’t solve this traffic problem for us, the middle and lower class of driving two hours back and forth to work, The Premier, and others won’t have a job in the next election, so you might want to think about upping the severance for his buddies because they will be gone.
Bullshit. Civil Service is still doing everything manually in 2023.
Can we pay fines or duties online yet?
And the amount of politicians should not increase – Less Government, More Responsibility and with God’s help a Better Cayman Islands.
Totally agree. I know for sure a lot at the top end can easily go and not need to be replaced. People hiding from work and collecting salary i know i work there.
Going to have to pay for Cayman Airways losses on Kenny’s new routes somehow.
When did the Premier’s role become her of the civil service??
It can also stop growing with political appointments which include no recruitment and proper job evaluation for salaries. Let us start there!
The Civil Service would not stop growing by curtailing political appointments, They are not civil servants.
but they get ridiculous salaries and the benefits as civil servants eg CINICO