The Professional Engineers Registration Board (PERB) is taking steps to make sure that the local industry’s high standards are maintained and are on par with international benchmarks. This is the word from the newly appointed Chairman of the body, Omar Sweeney, who tells JIS News that this is being pursued through stakeholder collaboration and legislation relating to training and retraining...

Jevon Lewis, Aristel Saint-Joy, and Lloyd Nelson will receive the Badge of Honour for Gallantry for their courageous efforts in rescuing five persons, including a baby, after heavy rains flooded roads and buildings in St James in November of last year. The three will receive their award at the National Honours and Awards Ceremony, scheduled for Monday (October 15), National...

With Jamaica making steady progress in the reduction of maternal and child mortality, there is a call for childbearing women to make personal health management a priority. According to Acting Director of Health Services, Planning and Integration at the Ministry of Health, Dr. Simone Spence, even though the public health system has been strengthened in recent years to offer critical...

The second cohort of grade-seven girls are now benefiting from the Ministry of Health’s Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination programme. The move is a proactive measure by the Government to protect girls against cervical cancer, which takes the lives of hundreds of women in the country per year and hundreds of thousands more worldwide. The vaccine is being administered to...

Minister of Health, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, says world leaders who participated in the third United Nations (UN) High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) have committed to taking steps to tackle the issue. “The NCD crisis is real and a danger to all of us. The statistics suggest that close to four billion of the seven-billion population of the...

The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) is staging a series of activities across the island from October 8 to 15 in celebration of National Heritage Week, under the theme ‘One Love…One Family…One Heritage’. Director for Community and Cultural Development Services at the JCDC, Marjorie Leyden-Vernon, told JIS News that the activities include parish awards ceremonies, church services, heritage festivals and...

The Government will be undertaking an educational campaign surrounding the impending ban on the importation, manufacture, distribution and use of specific categories of plastic packaging materials. Government Senator Matthew Samuda, who made the disclosure during Friday’s (October 5) sitting of the Senate, said the campaign will, among other things, highlight alternative packaging materials. “There is nothing that the Government has...