Expat majority isn’t in Gov’t

Very few government departments, statutory authorities and publicly owned companies in the Cayman Islands have a majority of foreign workers staffing them, according to a report compiled earlier in the government’s fiscal year.

That’s despite nearly 1,600 non-Caymanian workers remaining employed within the Civil Service and various government authorities.

According to the survey done by the Portfolio of the Civil Service, as of 30 June, 2010, there were just five central government departments that had less than half Caymanian workers. Those include emergency communications, the audit office, counselling services, the governor’s office and legal affairs office.

The study noted seven central government departments were 100 per cent Caymanian employers and that 34 out of a total of 57 agencies employed 72 per cent or more Caymanians in their respective departments.

Local divorce rate high

The Cayman Islands’ divorce rate - when compared with most of its Caribbean neighbours - is quite high, according to information contained in a report from the country’s Law Reform Commission.

The high divorce rate is coupled with a few areas where the commission found provisions in Cayman’s Matrimonial Causes Law (2005 Revision) were “archaic” and in need of review. Cayman averaged 219 divorces per year between 2005 and 2009, with the highest number of divorces for a single year coming in 2009, which saw 232 divorces.

The commission said that works out to about 4.2 divorces per 1,000 people in the country. Data collected on the website www.nationmaster.com indicated that only Puerto Rico (4.5 divorces per 1,000 people) and the United States (five divorces per 1,000) had a higher rate. Canada’s rate was 2.5 divorces per 1,000 people; Barbados’ rate was 1.2 divorces per 1,000, while Jamaica’s was only 0.38 divorces.

Auditing

Auditor General Alastair Swarbrick has been unable to verify three years of financial accounts from the Ministry of District Administration, Planning, Agriculture and Housing dating from 2005 to 2008.

For the 2007/2008 financial year, the most recent year submitted from the Ministry of District Administration, Planning, Agriculture and Housing, which during the years in questions were run by the then Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts, the auditor general was unable to verify the completeness or accuracy of $14.1 million in accounts receivable because supporting documentation had not been presented.

Developer unveils 
enterprise city PLAN

If legislators can quickly amend a host of laws that will allow for the creation of a special economic zone in the Cayman Islands, developers say they will have companies operating under licences by the third quarter of this year.

In what was the first of several public presentations, Hon Development Company LLC gave a press briefing to Cayman’s business leaders at the Chamber of Commerce to give more details about the proposed six-tiered, knowledged-based special economic zone that will be called Cayman Enterprise City.

Project CEO Jason Blick conducted the briefing, but Barry Hon and his son Darrell Hon were also both present and added comments.

The elder Hon, who has been developing for 50 years and has the 2,800-acre Foothill Ranch in Orange County, California, on his list of successful developments, said there were reasons why Cayman made sense for the creation of a special economic zone. He said being in the same time zone as the US east coast, as opposed to the 12-14-hour time difference with the Middle East special economic zones, was a huge advantage. He said the current spreading turmoil in the Middle East was also a reason companies would come to Cayman.

North Sound Channel MOU ‘imminent’

A proposal to dredge a channel in the North Sound is on the table, Premier McKeeva Bush has revealed.

“We have been having discussions [with a developer] so a Memorandum of Understanding should be imminent within a couple of weeks,” the Premier said.

Bush said that the vision is to dredge the channel closest to the head of Barkers National Park, which will meet up with the channel at Morgan’s Harbour and other extant cuts further south. It was yet to be determined how far toward the airport the channel would reach.

“I would like to see two islands in the area. There was a proposal some years ago and it didn’t go forward because of people talking without facts. This has been done and it hasn’t destroyed other environments. Why do they think it is going to destroy this environment?