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The Editor Speaks: CarePay and does anyone really care?

I came down heavy on Bodden Town MLA Chris Saunders in a recent editorial and likened him to the late British Actor Sir Christopher Lee’s performance playing the notorious “hanging judge” Judge Jeffries.

Today, I am somewhat on his side, as it still does not remain clear to me how only one man has been made accountable for the CarePay scandal that cost approx. $11Million tax payers money. Canover Watson is serving time in Northward Prison for corruption. I am not suggesting anyone else in the Health Services Authority should be joining him in prison but it is puzzling that no one else has even been reprimanded, let alone fired, for not spotting such a large sum of money had gone to pay for a card system that couldn’t possibly have cost anything like that sum.

It’s all very well Finance Minister Roy McTaggart, trying to explain to Saunders who kept persisting with his questioning, that the fraud was able to happen because the governance systems were weak.

Weak?

It was nonexistent.

More frightening is the discovery the hospital board is still vulnerable as no medical expert has been appointed yet as a director.

I do not, therefore, share McTaggart’s confidence that nothing like what happened in the past can be repeated. It’s all very well saying Watson, as chairman of the hospital board had wide powers, and new policies had been put into place to stop this, we immediately learn that not all these policies have been acted upon.

Surely enough time has gone past to have everything sealed and buttoned down but that is not the case.

Instead, we have the Deputy Governor now going on a witch hunt over Marco Archer’s appointment as CEO of The Cayman Islands Stock Exchange. His time would be better served doing more investigating into the HSA.

Or is that too difficult a task?

Or worse, does anybody care?

New policies were put into place after the Watson debacle but that hasn’t been adhered to.

Somehow the priorities don’t match, but Archer’s appointment is more pressing.

Deputy Governor, it is not.

CarePay should not have happened. It cost us dearly.

How much is Archer’s appointment that didn’t quite adhere to the rules going to cost us? Nothing.

Something doesn’t add up in any of this.

and Saunders questioning was quickly shut down by Speaker McKeeva Bush who seemed to have forgotten Watson’s appeal had already been heard. He lost.

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