Facility for young offenders ditched

At the last Minority Government Press Briefing last week it was announced by the  Minister of Community Affairs, Dwayne Seymour, that the proposed young offenders facility that was modelled on one in Missouri, USA, has been ditched due to costs.

Although $8M had been budgeted for the facility the latest estimate of building the facility was up to $11M.

Seymour said Governor Taylor was concerned about the running costs as “There was a considerable amount of staff that was going to be hired,” he said. Facility

It will now be up to the new government following elections to proceed on the young offenders centre.

BT soccer player who died had heart condition

Gerome Graham, a 20 year old soccer player for Bodden Town Football Club, collapsed and died on a soccer field during his team’s light skills training session at around 7pm June 12^th 2012.

At first, teammates thought Gerome Graham, known as “Bird”, was joking when he fell to the ground as he was renowned as one of the fittest players on the team.

But he had a massively enlarged heart condition that no one knew about.

This was revealed at a coroner’s jury, presided over by Queen’s Coroner Eileen Nervick,, last week by pathologist, Dr. Shravana Jyoti, who had said an enlarged heart was the leading cause of sudden death among young, competitive athletes. The condition is known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – an abnormal thickening of the heart muscle.

“Gerome would have had the heart defect since birth, but typically only becomes apparent after 14 years of age, if at all,” he said.

Vigorous activity, like soccer, could trigger a cardiac event, he added.

The jury recorded a verdict of death by natural causes.

New postal service announced

The Cayman Islands Postal Service has announced a “Watch for Request” new postal service.

The new service is to assist customers who are expecting small packages or parcels from overseas that have been improperly addressed. For a variety of reasons, there are customers who are unable to include a post office box number and or postcode when placing an order.

Melissa Martinez-Ebanks, deputy postmaster general, said, ““In the past, customers have called Cayman Island Post Service staff to request us to keep an ‘eye out’ for the item, and though the parcel post staff makes every effort to assist, the volume is such that they can’t adequately track all these requests so we decided to formalise the process.”

In order to make a “watch for” request, the addressee must have a valid item number. This service is for items that can be tracked with a 13-character alpha-number unique identifier, which begins and end with two letters (i.e. CP12345679US).

The new process is linked to the service’s parcel post database and the system automatically checks each new parcel processed against a list and alerts staff when an item is received.

“No regrets” over Dart deal says government

Although negotiations broke down last week between Dart Realty and the Cayman Islands government, Cabinet ministers said they still stood behind “the spirit of the deal.”

The third amendment to the Dart Realty and National Roads Authority deal that had already been agreed under signature finally came to an end (even though Dart had said ‘yes’ to most of the new conditions), when he was asked to make changes to hotel incentives in the Investment and Development Incentives Schedule. The figure is reportedly over tax concessions to Dart of over $16M in tax concessions

Dart then issued a press release stating the “NRA Agreement, including the First and Second Amendments, is a binding and enforceable agreement. That Government was negotiating a third amendment with Dart does not change the fact that a binding contract is in place.

“Government continues to acknowledge that since May 25, 2012 it has been in breach of its contractual obligation to close the full stretch of the road. Dart Realty has complied with all its obligations under the NRA Agreement thus far and continues to do so despite Government’s breach.

“The failure of Government to do what it is committed to and legally obligated to do, as well as the public acknowledgments by Government that they are fully aware they have been in breach since May 2012, negatively impacts Cayman’s international reputation as a credible place to do business, especially for other investors who may be considering public private partnerships.”

Deputy Premier Hon. Rolston Anglin said, “Anytime you pull a piece of something much bigger out and you’re not easily able to match up all of the benefits with any particular aspect of it then it really then does cause for there to be a much more difficult exercise in terms of assessing what the value of the proposition is.”

The deal was part of the large and complex For Cayman Investment Alliance which also included a controversial waste management facility in Bodden Town.

Alleged Pines theft to be investigated by RCIPS

The Royal Cayman Islands Police Service have confirmed they had received a report containing allegations of theft at the Pines Retirement Home in George Town.

“ A report on this matter has been received by the RCIPS Financial Crime Unit. Officers are awaiting an auditor’s report. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time,” a RCIPS spokesperson said.

The Pines announced two weeks ago they had dismissed its manager, Sue Nicholson, and was working with local accounting firm KPMG to prepare a report for the authorities.

Last Friday (17) a spokesperson for the The Pines said a preliminary written report had been given to the Financial Crimes Unit on 10^th May but the RCIPS had agreed the Home would follow up with a full report once the KPMG forensic audit is concluded.

“The Pines is continuing to work with Maples and Calder to secure repayment of funds owing and we hope shortly to report that these efforts have been successful,” the spokesperson also said.

C4C candidate denies the CEF was his idea

Jude Scott, one of the Coalition for Cayman (C4C) endorsed candidates standing for election for the District of George Town has denied the unpopular Community Enhancement Fee (CFE) ‘Expat Tax’ was his idea.

The McKeeva Bush led government last August tried to introduce the tax they called a fee in order to bring in revenue to balance the budget. Whilst it had United Kingdom approval it caused a huge concern in the Cayman community.

The boiling hot potato was dropped after a group of Cayman’s businessmen proposed a more viable and less unpopular solution, but on CITN/Cayman27’s “The Panel” talk show Scott’s name was linked to the tax as his idea.

In a statement made on camera outside the television station he rejected the claim.

“They [government],” he said, “decided they would implement a payroll tax on work permit holders and as a result they reached out to a number of people in the industry to get their feedback on how they can actually mitigate some of the problems this would cause. I merely gave my feedback which was largely ignored. But at the same time, I also lobbied along with others in the industry to try to convince the government to eliminate the excessive expenditure and stop the implementation of the payroll tax.”