EDITORIAL

Understanding Cayman’s population

Wednesday,  January 25, 2006

In our last editorial Cayman Net News raised the issue of population and its importance to the country’s future economic development.

While we noted the need to ensure our population should be increased sufficiently to meet the demands of our growing economy, the major issue concerning that is the fact that we don’t really know how many people live here or any details about them.

We are at the mid point between a national census but with the impact of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 the results of the last count now have every little bearing on our current situation. Therefore, it may be time for the Government to consider bringing the next census forward.

Moreover, it may well be opportune to either work out a way of encouraging more people to fill out the census information or dare we say even enforce the issue, such as tying participation to the granting or renewal of a driver’s licence.

While enforcement certainly encroaches on civil liberty issues it may be a move the administration has to consider.

This is because of the culture of secrecy, which, has prevailed in this country since the development of our offshore sector.

Unfortunately the habit of keeping things to ourselves makes measuring our society very difficult.

In order to govern, those in leadership must understand the dynamics, the details or the true profile of the population.

Most of the time issues here are based on assumptions about the population and very rarely on facts and figures or statistics, as so little about our community has been scientifically measured.

Aside from knowing how many people live here, there are many other things the Government should know about the population in order to better develop political strategies and policies that best serve the community.

We have very little factual information about what percentage of the population is poor, how large our middle-income bracket is, how many millionaires we have resident here.

We do not know exactly how many home and landowners we have or how many households are renting.

We don’t know anything about the consumer habits of Caymanian and residents and we know very little about people’s opinions on anything.

We have no official results of scientific polls and very little market research has been done about what people buy or consume here.

This lack of detailed knowledge about our population means that both Government and the commercial sector are working blindly.

The Government develops policies that it has no real idea whether the people who live here want or for that matter really need them.

Businesses sell their goods and services to a population that they have no idea of the profile.

We have some fourteen radio stations broadcasting on our airways and not one has any idea how many people listen and when.

None of the three newspapers or wide choice of magazines can tell you real hard facts about their average readers and it is the same for most stores who cannot be certain who comes in and why.

Such a shortage of information in other capitalist economies is unheard of, and while many may have gone too far with how much they know about their citizens, perhaps there is a happy medium.

In order for both the commercial and public sectors to better serve the entire population a little more understanding of who we all are and what exactly are all of our needs would be extremely useful.

It is therefore important for the Administration to consider how they can encourage people to fill in a census form and provide a few more details about themselves when they are unaccustomed to doing so. Compulsion may be a little draconian, so perhaps incentive is a better route to take.

Either way though learning more about who we are is important for all of us, so that in the long run, society as a whole can better serve the community.

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