Six electricians from the United Kingdom have been granted licences as wiremen here in the Cayman Islands after the Electrical Board of Examiners initially deferred and then refused their licence applications.
Although the six men were granted work permits in June, Androgroup Ltd. could not employ them men with out licences. The EBE, following the letter of the Electric Law, would not grant the licences because the men’s UK licences were not granted by a statutory body, but by guild-like bodies.
The EBE’s decisions upset Androgroup Ltd. Managing Director Alan Roffey because they went against years of precedent in accepting the City and Guilds qualifications of UK electricians as qualification for a licence here in the Cayman Islands.
Mr. Roffey said he needed the additional electricians badly and that the delay had impacted his business.
In the end, Mr. Roffey discovered that to obtain the City and Guilds standard, UK electricians now have to have a qualification known as a National Vocational Qualification in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; and a Scottish Vocational Qualification in Scotland.
The six electricians hired by Androgroup had SVQ’s, which are issued by the Scottish Qualification Authority, an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Scottish Executive Education Department.
Mr. Roffey provided the EBE with information about NVQs and SVQs, along with the requirement for obtaining them. He then asked the EBE to reconsider the licence applications and acknowledge the SVQ as being issued by a statutory body that requires equivalent standards to those required by the EBE to issue an electrician’s licence.
On Wednesday, Mr. Roffey said he heard that the six wireman applications had been approved.
Androgroup did not, however, get everything it wanted in the approvals. In earlier correspondence between its attorney and the EBE, Androgroup had requested the licences for the men to be upgraded to electricians rather than wiremen because it felt their qualifications warranted such a designation. The EBE only granted the licences as wiremen, although Androgroup has asked the Board to reconsider that decision rather than to go through the whole application process again.
Still, Mr. Roffey sees the EBE’s decision to issue the licences as a victory of sorts.
‘The decision sets a clear precedent that an application for someone with an NVQ or SVQ is going to be granted,’ he said. ‘They don’t have to change the law.’
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