When Premier McKeeva Bush announced the mortgage assistance
programme funded from proceeds of the ForCayman Investment Alliance designed to
prevent people from losing their homes during this time of economic downturn,
the blogs lit up with accusations of vote buying being behind the idea.
We haven’t supported all of the social programmes put
forward by Mr. Bush and the UDP government, and we were in fact quite critical
about the Nation Building Fund as it related to the paving of private property
using government resources. But now that we have seen more details of the
mortgage assistance programme, we
support it.
Unlike the Nation Building Fund expenditures, the mortgage
programme has a select committee to administer processes to ensure fairness and
built-in safeguards to prevent abuses. There’s also a method to get the loaned
money repaid.
It could be argued that the terms – interest free loans for
up to 50 years – are too generous, but that doesn’t take away from the fact
that the programme is needed by some Caymanians who have been caught unprepared
by an unprecedented economic downturn.
Governments all over the world have tried to help their
citizens through the economic crisis and the United States Government also
developed a mortgage assistance programme to help people who didn’t want to
lose their homes to foreclosure. A similar kind of programme could help many
honest, hard-working and proud Caymanians who have fallen on hard times.
But we should make no mistake about the nature of this
programme: it is merely a Band-Aid solution to a symptom and not the cure to
the problem of a lack of jobs. Unless Cayman is able to create more jobs so
that the people who are helped by the Save the Mortgage programme can get back
to work, they – probably along with many others – will only find themselves in
arrears and facing foreclosure again within a year.
As helpful as the funds from the ForCayman Investment
Alliance will be for those facing foreclosure on the home now, a more vital
aspect of the Dart mega deal will be the numerous jobs it will create over
time.
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Every qualified Cayman High School graduate willing to attend further education should be given the assistance needed to attend.
It could be in the form of a guaranteed loan or outright grant by our government..
Our kids compete with some of the most intelligent and upwardly aggressive people of the world
and they are not prepared..
Just take a look outside the calm.. Where is our Research and development, what patten has we registered from our genius. When was the last time we developed anything since a cat boat.
Education is the key to survival, and our leaders must be educated to educate and to understand the objectives of our competitors..
As benefactors of this modern economic platform subsidized by favorable tax incentives, our children should start reaping the benefits of the seeds our ancestor have sown.
Our vision and mission statement as a nation must answer the question I have been hearing for so long.
Extra growth for who..
We must understand what the UK meant when it said Cayman need to work toward a sustainable economy and for whom..
As Cayman new imported middle class push the envelope of competition they will gobble up the defunct mortgages and land lost by Caymanians and with it qualify by ownership, their status of stead.
Caymanians old fallback when arguments are lost to logic being; we are here to stay and you are here to go is no longer a substitute to winning the argument.
Education is the keystone in nation building, we need our kids to win the argument with intellect not at the point of a gun..