Premier confirms Saunders fired for harassment

(CMR) Premier of the Cayman Islands Wayne Panton has made it clear that despite giving former Deputy Premier Chris Saunders the opportunity to resign, he was actually fired due to issues with his conduct.

Mr. Saunders had initially claimed he resigned due to material differences with the Premier and claimed racism from the Governor. However, the Premier said the decision to fire the former Minister of Finance was not due to material differences but did not go into details about what the issues were with Mr. Saunder's conduct.

However, there are reports that several public sector workers in Mr. Saunders’ offices are on leave after making complaints that the Premier implied in a previous interview were about bullying and sexual harassment.

The Premier has been pushing to have Sexual Harassment legislation passed.  Speaking at the Economic Outlook conference recently, he championed the Sexual Harassment Bill, which will offer protection for people in the workplace, particularly women, who are often the subjects of sexual harassment.

Mr. Panton, who was speaking to Sandy Hill on The Cold Hard Truth, explained that Mr. Saunders was fired. He stated:

“Yes, I did offer him the opportunity to resign because of a number of matters that I had outlined to him. Those matters were serious issues of concern to me and to the government. He did not accept the offer of resigning, so I had to take the options that are open to me constitutionally to ask His Excellency the Governor to revoke his appointment as deputy premier as well as Minister for Finance and Economic Development and Minister for Border Control and Labour.”

The Premier went on to describe Mr. Saunder's comments on the ReGen project cost as a distraction and misrepresentation. He said there have been challenges with the project, but the cost given by Mr. Saunders is inaccurate.

“There have been a number of issues with this that have delayed this. Is it costly? Yes, it's costly…The comments around the cost being $2 billion versus going back to look at what was originally bid that is a combination of a distraction, and misdirection and misrepresentation really,” the Premier said.

The bid price was the construction cost of building the waste energy facility, but the project is likely to cost in excess of 1.5 billion over 25 years, Mr. Panton said.