Dear Editor,
Wow! Your article from 9 June in which BritCay is proposing a whopping 25% rise in the SHIC premiums will send the Caymanian society into a tailspin. As if this were not ominous enough, there is the proposed increase in water and sewerage rates. There goes any perceived advantage the working class thought they had with a rise in the minimum wage.
The situation is worse than it appears, however, as it speaks to the deeper problem of just ‘how much is enough’? In 1978, I posed the question of ‘For whom are we developing’? The flaw in all of this is that we have developed beyond the society’s ability to supply local labour. And yet, we continue to let greedy and avaricious developers persuade us that ‘more is better’. It is a formula for disaster and our current infrastructure is woefully inadequate.
Even worse, however, is the strain being placed on human relations – the widening gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, the increasing cries of generational Caymanians that they are being marginalized, and our alienated, disenchanted youth, and the expectations of exclusivity by the wealthy elites.
All of these contribute to what I have described as the ‘duality’ which is Caymanian society. It is a society which is now economically unsustainable and is fraying at its edges while priming to explode. Much of what I have mentioned are centrifugal forces which are driving the society into upheaval. It is an Augean mess crying out for Hercules.
J. A. Roy Bodden
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