Jamaican Minister Updates Diaspora on Growth and Reforms

Left to right: Marsha Coore Lobban, Jamaica’s High Commissioner to Canada; Kamina Johnson Smith, and Kurt Davis, Jamaica’s Consul General at Toronto

By Neil Armstrong

Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, says Jamaica continues to have a low unemployment although Hurricane Beryl contributed to a slight rise of 5.4 percent.

Updating Jamaican Canadians on some of the positive developments happening in Jamaica, she said the country’s record was at 4.2 percent and that was post-pandemic.

The minister was speaking at a diaspora town hall on September 18 at the Jamaican Canadian Community Centre in Toronto — a day before she co-chaired with Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Melanie Joly, the Women Foreign Ministers meeting hosted by Global Affairs Canada and participated in bilateral talks.

Senator Johnson Smith noted that the next phase of her trip would be to the United Nations in New York where there were several organizations, institutions and countries wanting to sit with the Jamaican government to discuss how Jamaica has done “what we have done in terms of debt management and reform as a small developing country.”

“Jamaica has the distinction of being a country — one of the very few in the world — that exited the pandemic with lower debt. We now have lower debt than we had before, our unemployment is lower than we had before and indeed we continue to ensure that we grow our economy to do even better.”

She said economic growth in and of itself has never been the goal of the government, instead it has been to be able to deliver more to the people of Jamaica.

Highlighting some examples, she said the government is modernizing the health sector.

“A lot more Jamaicans now come to hospitals that never used to before. This increases pressure when we have a system that has been underinvested or not invested in for decades. The last hospital that was built in Jamaica was May Pen in 1975,” she said.

Senator Johnson Smith said the government is expanding the primary healthcare system by renovating about 100 clinics so that people can access care closer to them. She noted that 47 of these clinics have been renovated with the support of the diaspora under the Adopt-A- Clinic program. Of that number, about 30 clinics received assistance from Florida.

At the same time, the government is renovating and reconstructing Cornwall Regional Hospital. She noted that there is major expansion at the Spanish Town Hospital and the new lab is already in place, and new wards are being constructed now.

A new ward opened recently at the Kingston Public Hospital and a new CT scanner has been installed, a new ward is being constructed at the Bustamante Hospital for Children plus a space for parents to stay who have critically ill children, and there is a massive expansion taking place at the University Hospital of the West Indies, she said.

The minister said more than 130 police stations have been renovated or rebuilt to create a better workspace for men and women in the security forces to have a better morale and a better sense of commitment, but also to be more efficient and effective. The work also creates better spaces for citizens to use.

At one time the victim of domestic violence and the perpetrator would be in the same space near each other at a police station when a report is being made.

“But now we have been training the police in sensitivity, and not only sensitivity, it’s about also how to manage information,” she said, so that the report remains sensitive.

To address the cycle of crime, she said six major police stations in communities that have a particularly high level of youth crime now have youth-friendly or child-friendly spaces that recognize that when young people come in conflict with the law there is a need to engage them differently.

There are also youth intervention social programs, and rehabilitation programs which are in the correctional system.