JAMAICA NOT DOING WELL IN AREA OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT...says PM Golding

  October 8, 2009

JAMAICA NOT DOING WELL IN AREA OF HUMAN

RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT...says PM Golding

Prime Minister Bruce Golding says Jamaica is not doing well in the area of human resource development. He said Government is this year spending $75B on education but not getting value for the money spent.

‘There is a lot of work to be done...there is a culture that has to be overturned...there is a complacency that has become institutionalized. I am not throwing stones at anybody...but I went to school in an era when if you failed your exams, the teacher would mourn more than you. That was the culture that existed', Mr. Golding said 

Speaking at Tuesday night's (Oct 6) Town Hall meeting at the UWI Mona campus, Mr. Golding said he will not accept the notion that people should graduate from high school with an elaborate ceremony and still cannot read and write.  He said one of the reasons he had asked Andrew Holness to take responsibility for education was based on the fact that he is one of the most capable Ministers in his cabinet and the Education portfolio requires serious commitment. Minister Holness was on hand to support the Prime Minister at Tuesday night's meeting and to provide an update of government's plans and policies for the Education Ministry.

Mr. Golding noted that Minister Holness has a massive job that required more than just investing more money in education. ‘We need to invest more resources in education... there is no debate about that and as soon as the resources are available, it will be done'. He said he wanted the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour to collaborate on the path of development that Jamaica is pursuing and to project where the jobs are to be created.

‘It is not fair to the students for them to be unaware...We need to say to the students this is the master plan development for the country...this is where the jobs are going to be... this is where greater value added is going to be for the services you can provide...because if you don't acquire those skills, we are going to have to have to import them and we don't want to do that'.

He said we are in a global market and so we have to be far more selective and practical in the choices we make.