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(CNS): The business community appears prepared to put their economic interest above the lives of Caymanians, the premier said after government was inundated with requests for companies that are not essential to exempt their workers from the imminent lockdown. Government wants businesses to close their doors so that as many people as possible can remain at home for the next ten days in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday evening, Premier Alden McLaughlin said government received hundreds of calls and emails about the potential lockdown, with bosses from every sector claiming that their workers are all essential.
“Everyone thinks they are an essential service,” McLaughlin told the press, as he expressed his clear frustrations with the overwhelming number of requests for exemptions from employers whose workers would be required to stay home and for their businesses to close.
The proposed lockdown, which the premier wanted to introduce tomorrow, would require everyone to ‘shelter in place’, in other words to stay home. The only exemptions would be those who are part of what will become a mandated list of essential services, but that has now been delayed because of the struggle to create a definitive list and get the support of so much of the private sector.
However, the curfew will begin this evening at 7pm and only people who are part of the emergency or security services, medical and health providers, utility and fuel workers, food suppliers and delivery people from restaurants will be allowed on the road.
The police commissioner said that during this first night his officers will be reasonable and fair in the application of the law but that it will not be a liberal consideration of the law. He warned that police visibility will be high, and while officers will consider reasons people put forward for breaching the curfew before they are prosecuted, names and addresses will be taken.
The requirement for people to practice six feet social distancing as well as the reduction to only two people in any given place other than family homes is also now mandated.
The premier was clearly furious that the full ‘shelter in place’ order has had to be delayed because so many employers are insistent that their staff are essential. McLaughlin was particularly outraged after suggestions that the entire financial services sector, which is more than capable of working remotely and has business continuity plans, should be exempt.
He said the message was obviously not getting through to the business community that this is a national health emergency in which hundreds of people could die if we don’t act to curb the spread of this novel coronavirus. “We have requests for thousands of people being exempted,” he said. “It would be pointless for us to proceed with a shelter in place order if we granted all of those exemptions.”
He said everyone was concerned about the economic consequences and so was government, but the economics were not more important than lives. What the government is proposing will have a negative economic effect over the ten days it is proposed to run. But the premier said that if the strategy succeeds in containing or restricting community spread, lives will be saved and there will be no need for a full lockdown that could last months.
McLaughlin explained that government was abandoning the plan for Tuesday night to grapple further on Wednesday on how best to do it and try to get the cooperation of the business community who, he said, “seem prepared to risk the lives of their employees” to save their businesses. But he warned he would impose a radical 24/7 full curfew if they did not support the ‘shelter in place’ order tomorrow.
“We are not going to allow economic considerations to kill our people,” the premier said, adding that he would not let economics to come before anything else.
Urging people to understand that government was doing all it could to deal with this national health emergency, he said he was worried that “we will have to bury some of our own people” before the community takes this seriously.
McLaughlin said that what government was trying to do was avoid the death and disaster seen in so many places around the world with this short term lockdown for just ten days, hopefully giving Cayman a chance to limit or even contain any further spread of this deathly pandemic.
See the full press conference below
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