There is maybe important reason but I don't undesrtand why you just don't have one <table> tag with children <thead>  <tfoot> <tbody>  just one time no more... Because it's very difficult to manipulate DOM after the jqGrid plugin's load....

 I wonder this because I want to do responsive table like this : http://codepen.io/JasonAGross/pen/rjmyx (try to resize you will see it's awesome and interesting )

Have fun, jqGrid is very good job !