Letter to the Editor

Crane comments made by Hon McKeeva Bush were incorrect

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Dear Sir,

Please allow me space in your paper to correct some statements made on the evening of 20 July by Hon McKeeva Bush on a live televised political meeting.

He made a number of negative comments about my handling of Tourism and Port Authority matters. I wish to deal with only one item today – that of the Port, as I will deal with the Tourism at another time.

Hon McKeeva Bush said: “Tom Jefferson ran the private sector cranes off George Town dock and bought a CI $3,000,000 crane which could not operate on the finger pier.”

My response to these claims is as follows: firstly, I did not buy the crane, the Port Authority did. The Authority in the early days of its operations wanted to acquire its own cranes, but did not have the funds to buy them.
So a private sector crane operator that had other interests as well, put its cranes on the docks to offload ships.

Approximately 20 years later the Port Authority found itself in a financial position to take over all operations of the port and to improve security at the port.

The Authority, in all fairness to the private sector operator, offered to purchase all the cranes, but they were not interested in selling. All proposals regarding the crane were approved by the Executive Council.
We had reached a time in Cayman where security at the port and other areas were becoming more and more of a concern.

Certainly, if I had not put this in place, with all the security concerns of recent time, the Hon McKeeva Bush would have had to assure all of us in Cayman that security was in place. So the action I took was forward thinking on security matters.

The Authority took the decision to purchase a crane and take over all trucking, which provided full control of the employees within the perimeter fence of the dock, and this crane has been operating profitability from the mid 1990s.

Mr Bush tried to make the point that the crane couldn’t operate on the finger pier until he fixed it within the last year.

May I ask then how did the ships get unloaded if that statement is true?

From the mid 1990s to 2000 when I left office, the annual operations of the crane was profitable.

With these facts, I must ask the Hon McKeeva Bush to please get his story straight!

Thomas C Jefferson OBE JP

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