Government oversight
Mac calls for HRC chair to be sacked
(CNS): The fallout from the chief justice’s ruling legalising same-sex marriage continued in the Legislative Assembly Friday, when Speaker McKeeva Bush accused the chair of the Human Rights Commission of contempt regarding a press release from the HRC released Thursday. Bush said James Austin-Smith should be fired because he is an atheist. Following on from […]
HRC: Appeal in same-sex marriage case ‘unarguable’
(CNS): The Human Rights Commission has said that government’s decision to appeal Chief Justice Antony Smellie’s judgment in the same-sex marriage petition will fail because the grounds are “weak to the point of being unarguable”. The HRC said government’s decision to commit hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money to appeal, based only on […]
Miller calls for new approach to board selection
(CNS): Opposition Leader Ezzard Miller, who is also Public Accounts Committee chairman, is calling for a different approach to appointing members to public sector boards, noting that government has been recycling the same old members for decades. In the PAC hearing last week, Miller said that the only reason why government was struggling to find […]
CPA not covered by PA law, claim officials
(CNS): Planning Director Haroon Pandohie and the chief officer in the ministry responsible for the Central Planning Authority have both said that the entity does not fall under the Public Authorities Law. Despite concerns from the public and some politicians that it is the Cayman Islands’ most conflicted board, the CPA does not fall under […]
Inspectors: Prospect improves as Savannah struggles
(CNS): Education inspectors have found that Prospect Primary School is improving, though it fell short of receiving a ‘good’ result because of a few areas that still need work, but Savannah Primary is still struggling. While Prospect was rated ‘satisfactory’ overall with many areas found to be ‘good’, Savannah was ‘weak’ in the majority of […]
Lighthouse school shines following inspection
(CNS): The Lighthouse School was described as “a good school” by education inspectors this month after it was rated ‘excellent’ in several categories and ‘good’ in the majority of areas inspected. It was rated satisfactory in just two areas and none at all were rated poorly. As government schools largely struggle to get past a […]
Bean counters work on public cash oversight
(CNS): Parliamentarians and auditors from the UK and its overseas territories are meeting in Miami, Florida, this week at the Oversight of Public Finances Forum to continue the UK-led project to improve the critical issue of oversight of public finances. A Cayman delegation led by the chairman of the Cayman Islands Public Accounts Committee, Ezzard […]
Immigration ignores FOI requests
(CNS): The Department of Immigration (DoI) has admitted that a shortage of resources and its transition into two new agencies, the Customs and Border Control Agency and Workforce Opportunities and Residency Cayman, left it unable to manage freedom of information requests. The Office of the Ombudsman, which deals with appeals relating to troublesome requests, found […]
Poor record keeping keeps public in dark
(CNS): Cayman Islands Ombudsman Sandy Hermiston called out the Department of Labour and Pensions (DLP) for poor record keeping following a hearing over a disputed freedom of information request relating to pension records where civil servants claimed that communication about the issue in question was largely through word of mouth. Hermiston said the practice of government […]
Miller: Cruise bid going very wrong
(CNS): Opposition Leader Ezzard Miller intends to press his concerns about the failure of government to follow the necessary laws and procedures surrounding the cruise port tendering process with official bodies as well as speak out about the problems in the media. Miller told CNS that the “evidence indicates something has gone very wrong” with […]
West Bay school still weak, inspectors find
(CNS): School inspectors found that overall progress has been weak at Sir John A. Cumber Primary School in West Bay during the six months since the school was last reviewed. The school’s second follow-through inspection took place on 30 January to 1 February, and while a number of improvements were identified, the standards of achievement “remained […]
