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The government of Venezuela has granted scholarships to 10 Jamaicans to study sports related courses at the IBER American and Caribbean Sports University in Venezuela. Minister of Local Government, Community Development and Sport, Portia Simpson-Miller has informed that eligible students would be required to read for a degree in the areas of physical activity, health, sports training and sports technology...

Employees who suspect that their National Insurance Scheme (NIS) contributions are not being paid over by employers are being encouraged to verify that the deductions are in fact, turned in. Denzil Thorpe, Director of National Insurance in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, tells JIS News that an acceptable course of action for an employee to pursue, is to...

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has added another overseas law enforcement official to its ranks. He is Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Les Greene, who will be in charge of serious and organized crime. ACP Greene has been on secondment from Scotland Yard since October 2004 as part of the technical support provided by the Metropolitan Police to Operation Kingfish....

More than 400 4-H clubbities in St. James, along with their leaders, have benefited from training sessions organized by the parish's advisory council since the start of the year. According to 4-H Parish Manager for St. James, Barbara Lawrence, the training programme was a continuous one and was geared towards equipping the clubbites with the necessary skills to properly function...

Managing Director of the Water Resources Authority (WRA), Basil Fernandez, has pointed out that the floodwaters affecting some sections of St. Ann for the last six months would continue to affect those areas for some time yet. Speaking with JIS News following a tour of the flooded areas last week, where he and a team of geologists from the WRA...

Cabinet has approved the appointment of the chairman and members of the Town and Country Planning Authority for a period of two years with effect from January 2, 2006. Making the announcement at Monday's (Jan. 16) post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House, Information Minister, Senator Burchell Whiteman informed that Ruth Potopsingh, Group Managing Director at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica,...

A Resolution calling on Parliament to engage in a debate on the island's justice system and the problem of crime and violence is now before the House of Representatives. It was moved by Opposition Spokesman on Justice and Member of Parliament for St. Andrew North Eastern, Delroy Chuck during yesterday's (January 17) sitting of the House. The Resolution reads: Whereas...

On February 2, 2005, when we last met together like this, I greeted you with a great deal optimism and hope, in spite of some real challenges, which some might have even characterized as real and present danger. Being a man given to optimistic realism, or realistic optimism whichever way you decide to spin it - it simply means that...

Prime Minister P.J. Patterson has emphasized that capital markets and investments were critical to the economic development of any country, and that the material progress in a society could be measured by the state of its capital markets. Mr. Patterson said that capital markets, which were important elements of the Jamaican economy and the wider Caribbean economy, were "critical to...

Effective January 30, some 200,000 national minimum wage earners and industrial security guards are set to benefit from increases in their earnings. There will be a 16.66 per cent increase in the national minimum wage, moving from $2,400 to $2,800 per 40 hour work week and a 15 per cent increase in the minimum wage for industrial security guards, with...

Finance and Planning Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, has said that the inflation rate for the month of December 2005 was 0.1 per cent, which would result in an outturn of about 1 per cent for the last three months of the calendar year. The Finance Minister, who was speaking to journalists at the Half Moon Hotel in Montego Bay this...

The first conference of the Jamaican Diaspora in the United Kingdom (UK), is set for Saturday, April 1 in Birmingham. This conference aims to widen the participation and strengthen the impact of the Jamaican Diaspora in the UK. Plans for the conference were discussed on January 14 at a meeting of the UK Diaspora group, regional co-ordinators and interest group...