Opposition calls for Cayman cruise port referendum
The opposition has announced plans to spearhead a campaign to collect enough signatures from registered voters to trigger a referendum on the proposed development of cruise berthing facilities in the George Town Harbour. Opposition Leader Ezzard Miller told CNS Tuesday that he believes the majority of Caymanians do not support this costly and risky project but a small vocal group has been driving the agenda, which is not in the best interests of the country. Miller said it was time to put the project on hold until the people can have their democratic say.
Miller has continued to raise more concerns in recent months as his efforts to find out the details of the proposed development, including anticipated costs and the issues surrounding the final design, have failed to shed any light on exactly what the country will be getting, how much it will cost and precisely what the various parties involved are actually bidding on.
The opposition leader has become increasingly alarmed about the lack of transparency and the growing evidence that the arguments and justification for the project are misleading and unfounded.
“Right now there is a vacuum of information, when at this point you would expect government would be able to tell us important details,” he said.
As well as questions about cost and environmental risks, not least the issues relating to Seven Mile Beach, Miller queried what exactly is the final design government has decided on.
“Is there a final design that all of the pre-qualified bidders are competing on or are they all suggesting their own?” the opposition leader asked. “The public does not know what it is getting,” he said, as he railed against the secrecy surrounding what would be the biggest ever capital expenditure project in Cayman’s history.
Miller also questioned the justifications government has given for the piers and claims about why Cayman needs them. He said that from the beginning, government has claimed that the smaller cruise ships were going to disappear from the Caribbean, which he said was plainly not true. He also debunked the claim that the new class of mega-cruise ships were unable to tender because the cruise industry has made it clear that this is not the case. He said the ships are tendering in several destinations, including their own private islands.
Claims that peers will facilitate tour operators to sell more trips are also false, he said, because offering berthing facilities to cruise lines will not alter the timetable for when the ships come and go, as this relates to the port calls and the on-board casino opening hours.
“There is no clear justification for this project. Government’s own statistics make it clear that every year the cruise industry is growing and there are no projected reductions on the horizon,” he said. “Government has been saying for some 20 years that the ships will not come unless we build piers, but they are still coming in ever greater numbers.”
The opposition leader said he and his team still have concerns about the many known risks to the marine environment and Seven Mile Beach, as well as the unknowns. “We don’t know where the piers are going to be. Will they be in or out of water, as we know there is a risk to the current and by extension the beach?” he added.
Miller also questioned the approach government has taken to the tendering process and asked where the truth lies. Nine bidders were said to be qualified but now maybe three or five are being invited to actually submit bids, and the opposition leader called on government to explain how all this has come about.
Following a recent FOI request submitted by CNS regarding the cruise project, a slither of information was released last week indicating that five bidders from the original nine who were pre-qualified had been invited to “submit outline solutions”.
This is at odds with other sources who told CNS that government is in talks with just three possible bidders. But whatever the current considerations, none of these bidders have been identified, and no details of the basis for the bids or what process is being followed have been revealed.
“We don’t even know the methodology being used for this tender and what we do know doesn’t make any sense,” Miller said, as he questioned how the procurement committee would be able to properly evaluate bids.
The opposition leader also asked about the finances and queried how much of an impact there would be on the cargo port if the project is to be financed entirely from cruise passenger fees.
“How much of the subsidy from cruise passenger that goes to the cargo operations will be impacted?” Miller asked, as he raised the real concern that diverting that subsidy could fuel a cost of living increase if the port operations and fees increase.
He further warned that the impact on the local infrastructure of 2.3 million passengers a year would be huge. On busy days there would be no tendering process to control the influx of passengers, he noted, compounding the overcrowding and adding to the challenges of managing the numbers.
Miller said that, instead of taking on the massive and unpopular risk of the berthing project, he wanted to see government invest in improvements to the current situation, buying bigger and more modern tenders, and improving the onshore experience at both the George Town terminals and at Spotts.
With so many unanswered questions, the opposition members are working on formulating a motion to force a debate in the Legislative Assembly and to get the questions that government has avoided answering into the public domain.
“We need a debate on floor of the Assembly to force government to unveil this information,” Miller said.
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