We hear quite rightly that jobs should be given to Caymanians first and I was startled to learn that only three local applicants out of 83 locals who applied for jobs at HMP Northward were employed.

What’s going on here, I thought?

North Side MLA Ezzard Miller thought so too.

This is the sad face of the coin exposed again.

However, Prison Director Neil Lavis showed the Finance Committee the other side of the coin.

Lavis said all were invited to attend the interview but a large proportion did not even show up. Another large number did not make it through the basic literacy and numeracy or the scenario test. When it finally came down to the fitness test and the full interview only four made it through.

The final test was the training course and one of the four did not complete it. He was given the chance to take it again but declined.

There were 177 applicants from abroad and HMP have employed just 10.

Miller wanted to see the details of the fitness tests saying he had heard some of the Caymanians that had failed were only just short. “It was possible to train people to be fit,” he said.

Lavis said the fitness test was not taxing. It included sit-ups and push-ups, an agility test running around cones, and running a mile in ten minutes.

Lavis said once recruits are on the staff they have to meet a minimum fitness criteria immediately. When there is an emergency the prison officers have to be able to quickly get from one side of the prison compound to the other and be able to deal with a potential dangerous situation. Being fully fit was essential to the job.

If people were not fully fit and could not meet the standards he required he could not take the risk of employing them.

When asked if all the overseas recruits had previous correctional experience he admitted that some didn’t. However, he explained, those that didn’t had been in military service or the security sector.

So there we have it.

Every coin has two faces and both are different.

Most of the time we only want to see the one we like.