Civil servants get innovative to meet challenges

The Civil Service Association has come up with a programme to curb the cost of food in the Cayman Islands and have banded together to import food and produce from Honduras in bulk. 

James Watler, president of the association, said he could not give many details about the programme, but confirmed that the association was engaged in the process.  

“The pilot project was a great success and has been functional since June of last year, with the last order for produce taking place in December of last year,” Mr. Watler said.  

He said the initiative provides participants with food and produce from the Central American country at a fraction of the cost paid for goods shipped to the Cayman Islands by suppliers. Suppliers are essentially middle men in the supply chain who have to mark up prices to reflect costs and profits.  

The Civil Service Association is autonomous of the Cayman Islands government and, as such, the programme cannot be considered a government initiative. To date, the total number of people benefiting is unclear, he said. Government is the largest employer in the Cayman Islands. 

“I suspect the number of people to be in the thousands,” Mr. Watler said.  

He pointed out that the food was not being offered to the public, as “the association is not competing with Foster’s. The programme is only to help civil servants in a tough economy”. 

The next step for the programme is to build on the success of the initial pilot project. To this end, three modules and portable classrooms that were in use by primary schools to offset overcrowding are being secured from the primary schools to act as distribution centres.  

“We were in a residential area before and this was not ideal,” he said. “It was a pilot and people understood that, so we had no issues. What we discovered was that people’s grocery bills were cut in half in many instances.” 

Mr. Watler said he hoped that within the next three months the association would have everything in place to get the programme going again. 

He said the programme is timely considering the recent 3.2 percent pay cut for civil servants. He said the Civil Service Association would speak in detail on the issue at a later date.