S.Atlantic : A Brief Round-up of St. Helena Business News (08/31 - 09/10/2005)
Submitted by SARTMA.com (Juanita Brock) 10.09.2005 (Article Archived on 24.09.2005)
Find out what is happening in St. Helena.
A BRIEF ROUND-UP OF ST. HELENA BUSINESS NEWS
(08/31 TO 09/10/2005)
Compiled by J. Brock (SARTMA – StH)
SPAM OR SCAM
As Published in St. Helena Herald: 09/09/05
By John Turner,
Manager, Bank of St. Helena
If you use the Internet and email you will almost certainly receive unsolicited emails from people you don’t know, offering you goods and services. One particular type of email is especially dangerous– the sort that tries to persuade you to send money or personal details to the sender, usually in exchange for some financial reward.
Examples include emails that claim that you are the last surviving relative of a deceased person, or that the sender is trying to smuggle illegal funds out of their country and will give you a percentage in exchange for your help, or simply that you have won a prize in some foreign lottery.
In most cases, initially all they will ask for you to do is to send them a reply. However, later on they will almost certainly ask you for money (either as ‘commission’ or ‘to enable us to process the transaction’) or for personal details.
The email may even appear to come from a legitimate financial institution. Don’t be fooled. It is easy to fake a sender’s email address.
At Bank of St. Helena we have had customers enquiring whether they should send money in response to these requests. Although the decision remains with the customer, and the bank will always act on your instructions whatever doubts we may have, our advice is that these offers are almost certainly false and you will never receive any payout in return.
Another, perhaps more worrying scam, is the one that asks you to send them details of your bank accounts. Someone in possession of this information could conceivably fake an account transfer instruction from you, thus emptying your Savings Account. So, please, never give your personal and banking details to anyone you don’t know personally and trust. Also, as emails can be intercepted and read by other people, don’t ever put any secret information into an email. If you feel your account details may have been compromised, please contact us immediately.
Bank of St. Helena will never ask you to confirm any transaction or your account details by email. If you receive an email of this nature, purporting to come from us, it is a fake. Email is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family overseas, but be very careful about unsolicited emails from strangers with astounding offers, however plausible. The best response to these is the ‘Delete’ key.
Slack tourism is affecting local Hotels
As Published in the St. Helena Herald: 02/09/05
The Herald previously spoke to the proprietors of the Consulate Hotel and the Wellington Hotel to find out how their businesses are coping and if they are geared up for when the airport arrives. This week, we interviewed the proprietors of Farm Lodge Country Hotel about shipping and airport issues.
Maureen Jonas and Stephen Biggs privately own Farm Lodge and prior to this, they worked onboard our local ship as officers. They bought the lodge in 1995 on the advice of Government advisor Stuart Mosey and converted it into a Hotel, which opened its doors for business in early 1999. They told me that business was good when they started and so were the arrangements with Curnow who provided them with the majority of these bookings. They started with one bedroom and looking at their returns and increased bookings in the first few years, invested more money until they eventually had five letting rooms and all the added amenities that went with them, however since then their income has dropped. The Island’s government advocates tourism as the major money earner of the future and encourages private enterprise to invest so this is what they had done.
Maureen and Stephen told the Herald that there is no need to repeat what has already been said by other Hotel proprietors, as they agree with them and there has certainly been a decline in guests over the last couple of years. Tourism is important to their business and without Tourists, their Hotel simply cannot survive.
The Farm Lodge owners went on to say that recently more and more passengers seem to be boarding the ship in Cape Town, travelling to St.Helena where they stay for two days, sometimes aboard the vessel, and then travel on to Ascension before flying out to the UK. Their stay on Ascension is limited as well. They added that this is not doing St.Helena businesses any good. The proprietors went on to say that their personal opinion is that Andrew Weir have gone back a step as they are not using the ‘shuttles’ properly. “Surely the whole idea was to bring the tourists from South Africa, let them stay here a week before going back and to keep the shuttles relatively free for Saint offshore workers and Government officials to use Ascension. This would then allow local accommodation owners; tour and car hire operators, shops owners, local restaurants and cafés etc to earn the extra income. Time is not an issue as it is roughly the same time to travel Cape town – St Helena – Ascension as it is to travel Walvis Bay – St Helena (stay a week) and back to Walvis Bay (money may not be an issue as well. It seems it may even be cheaper for UK and European passengers with the new Namabian Air flights to Gatwick) so why are so many ‘tourists’ in transit and not staying the full week here?”
Maureen said that the Tourist office should be doing promotion overseas in conjunction with Andrew Weir. They should be pushing for tourists to come to St Helena for a week before travelling back to Cape Town or Walvis Bay. We won’t get any tourism unless something is done about it,” She also added, “To be fair, Curnow also started very badly and it took them a while to get the passenger side right. But they did eventually manage it.”
She also felt that AWSL should have already identified this problem and said, “The first year understandably they were learning, but it is now five years down the road. Even when the new managers took over the ship, they had plenty of bookings for another year or so to carry on with. Those bookings weren’t Andrew Weir’s; they were Curnow’s bookings. Tourists generally book a year in advance. This is the second year running for the new route and the schedule ends in April 2006 – in eight month’s time! This is not the fault of AWS but our own government on island! The future schedule is also important to us as well as the tourists.”
Maureen uses a regular customer who has visited her hotel four times previously as an example. Last year, he wanted to book for early this year but couldn’t because there wasn’t a schedule out.
So he went elsewhere, which meant Maureen’s business suffered losses. She then received an e-mail 6 weeks ago saying that he wanted to book again for the later part of next year. However, he was informed that he could only book up to April because there’s no schedule after then!. Maureen has been to see the Director of Tourism, Pamela Young who was going to look into the issue. But at present, there is still no new shipping schedule published and Maureen feels that this is the reason why her bookings are so limited as Tourists depend on the schedule for travelling times.
Stephen goes on to give a brief history about the route that Curnow initially started. He said, “With Curnow Shipping, the RMS used to visit England 6 times a year. On a northbound voyage, the ship went from Cape Town to St Helena and then did a shuttle to Ascension and back to St Helena. It would call at Ascension again before making the twelve-day journey to the UK. Unfortunately though, this route had its share of problems, which were not identified right away. It stemmed from the fact that there were very few berths available on the RMS for main line (CT to UK) passengers due to the lack of space available on the second voyage to Ascension. So what Curnow eventually did was to use the first shuttle to Ascension for Saint workers, who were returning to off shore employment, along with government officials returning to the UK etc (and their opposite numbers returned to St Helena on the southbound sector of the shuttle) This left the second voyage to Ascension less fully booked and consequently this started to attract a nice volume of main line tourists who travelled from CT to UK staying a week on our island before continuing north. The same applied to passengers wishing to travel by sea from the UK to CT.
By freeing up the deep-sea leg of the shuttles, this also allowed space available for saint’s emergencies such as funerals, medical, weddings etc; on the second call to Ascension on a northbound voyage and the first call to St Helena on a southbound voyage. It was the subsequent loss of through (main line) passengers to and from the UK and Cape Town that possibly caused the schedule to be changed to what we have now. I hope AWS have considered this with regard to their new advertising campaigns for the two forthcoming UK voyages.” She and Stephen went on to say that if tourists go elsewhere because they can’t get to St.Helena, (whether it’s because of the lack of a schedule or the ‘ship is full’) it is going to be hard to attract them back, especially as tourists talk among themselves and will direct others to places that they have visited. Apart from advertising, word of mouth is very strong,
“For everyone that enjoys their stay here maybe two will return and for everyone who does not get here, two who might have come, may not”
To improve the current shipping arrangements, they both feel that the ship and the Island need to be marketed properly, in conjunction with a proper schedule, which could result in the right kind of Tourists coming to the island. If this is done properly then local accommodations will survive but if tourism continues to be the way it is, then the years leading up to the airport are going to be detrimental to private businesses.
FROM SHG
Third Round of Training for Community Workers
The Employment and Social Security Department has just completed its third round of training with Community Workers.
Interviewing Officer, Cynthia Bennett, said this training is all part of the Return to Work Scheme within the Long Term Unemployment Policy which was approved by Executive Council in 2003. The scheme was designed to get unemployed persons off the three-day work scheme and back into full time employment.
The training comprised of two half-day sessions with one focusing on Stress Management, delivered by Carolyne Kewn, the visiting Clinical Neuropsychologist, and Ian Rummery the Elderly Care Manager, and the other on Interviewing Techniques carried out by Cynthia herself. Sessions were held in Jamestown, Half Tree Hollow, St Paul’s and Longwood.
95 people took part in the training from all districts together with staff members from the Department attending the Stress Management Course as part of their staff development programme.
The Stress Management course gave all participants an insight into stress issues and the problems which are attributed to it, and how one can become easily stressed. The course also showed how stress can be managed and the way we cope and respond which includes being able to understand stress. The interviewing techniques course showed participants how to prepare and present themselves at a job interview. Cynthia said that overall, the majority of the people found the courses to be “interesting and beneficial.”
Training will be ongoing, and the next follow up course in the pipeline will focus on the completion job application forms and Curriculum Vitaes. These skills will be useful for Community Workers and the unemployed when they are applying for jobs.
Public Relations/Information Office: Office of the Chief Secretary, 31 August 2005
Results of the 2005 General Election
The counting of votes for the 2005 General Election concluded at around 2am this morning. Results were announced by the Returning Officer, Ethel Yon, who spoke from the Council Chambers where a number of candidates and their counting agents were in attendance.
The Results of the Election in the East Electoral Area were as follows:
East:
Bernice Alicia Olsson, 340 votes
Brian William Isaac, 319 votes
Eric William Benjamin, 304 votes
Robert MacMillan Robertson, 239 votes
Stedson Robert George, 231 votes
William Eric Drabble, 230 votes.
These persons have now been duly elected to serve as Legislative Councillors.
Rodney Garth Buckley had 219 votes.
In the West Electoral area results were:
Stedson Graham Francis, 523 votes
Lionel George Williams, 427 votes
Anthony Douglas Leo, 361 votes
Mervyn Robert Yon, 331 votes
John Reid, 273 votes
Victor John Lines, 269 votes
These persons have also been duly elected to serve as Legislative Councillors.
Eric Walter George MBE, had 259 votes
Cyril Keith Gunnell had 218 votes
and Eric Gordon Andrews had 212 votes.
A total of 1041 persons turned out to vote on Polling Day representing 47.32% of those on the Electoral Roll.
Public Relations/Information Office: Office of the Chief Secretary, 1 September 2005
Press Release
On 26 August 2005, the Office of the Chief Secretary issued a press release stating that candidates who were standing in the 2005 General Election had been given the opportunity to speak to the electorate via TV. Full reasons were given in that Press Release.
The TV broadcast took place on 30 August with the majority of the candidates taking the opportunity to speak to the electorate.
There was a cost attached to the programme and it was publicly alleged that SHG had misappropriated funds when paying for the production.
Because of this, the Audit Department conducted an independent review of the expenditure. It concluded with the opinion that this expenditure has been appropriately incurred and financed in a manner which was in full compliance with St Helena Government’s financial regulations and contract regulations framework which exists to protect the public purse.
Public Relations/Information Office: Office of the Chief Secretary, 2 September 2005
Revised Date for Inaugural Meeting of LegCo
HE Governor Clancy has announced a revised date for the inaugural meeting of the Legislative Council. He had said that he wished to see this take place on Monday 5 September but he has now decided to postpone this until Monday 12 September.
On reflection he considers that delaying a week should enable all those elected to participate in the first meeting of the new Council. Mr Stedson George should by then have returned to the Island and it is hoped that Mr Robert Robertson will have recovered from his illness. The postponement will also give those who are new to the Legislative Council more time to familiarise themselves with procedures and protocol. The successful candidates will also have longer to discuss whom they wish to nominate as the Chairs of the five Council Committees and therefore as ExCo Members.
This will mean some delay before Executive Council can get to grips with issues such as the future schedule of the RMS.
Another downside is that the time will be even tighter to nominate an Executive Council Member to attend the Overseas Territories Consultative Council. Any nominee would need to leave St Helena on 8 October.
Office of the Governor: The Castle, 1 September 2005
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