Public Sector Employees Challenged To Improve Quality And Efficiency Of Service

Minister of Development, Dr. Paul Robertson, has challenged employees in the public sector to improve the quality and efficiency of their service in order to set the pace for Jamaica to become more competitive globally.

“The country’s competitiveness can only be achieved with the help of public sector professionals.and understanding and appreciating that countries, which are not efficient and competitive, will be severely punished. The public sector has to lead the charge in this regard,” he emphasized.

Dr. Robertson was addressing public sector employees at the closing ceremony of a business training course at the Management Institute for National Development (MIND) in Kingston, recently.

He cited the benefits to be gained from the five-week business facilitation course, and noted that the training programme would have a positive impact on inter-agency co-operation and the country’s bottom line in terms of investments.

The Minister said in regard to being a catalyst for change in the business climate, the Jamaican government has sought to develop strategies and identify areas for improvement.

As such, the Minister said the government’s investment agency, JAMPRO, played host to the recent ‘Caribbean Rim Investment Initiative’ conference, in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The Initiative, Dr. Robertson said, was intended to encourage foreign direct investments to the Caribbean region and assist countries to review their business environment. The Minister stressed that for Jamaica to survive with a firm footing in the global marketplace, “we must not only increase productivity, but also develop our creativity and master new technologies”.

To this end, the Minister said the government has sought to enhance the business environment by simplifying operations and processes.

“The government, through funding agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and in collaboration with the private sector, is tackling some of the grey areas, for example, Legislation, Regulations and the Process Improvement Project,” the Minister said.

Dr. Robertson added that the government, through JAMPRO, was also supporting the Jamaica Exporters Association’s Cluster Competitiveness Programme, “which seeks to upgrade and improve specific companies in target sectors identified  in  the  National Industrial Policy, by first working at the micro-business level”.

The Minister said that while the government was looking at enabling legislation and regulations and reducing the bottlenecks in the public sector, there was a push towards upgrading and modernizing the private sector, all geared at increased country competitiveness. Dr. Robertson noted that Jamaica was ranked 14th out of 75 countries in the 2001/2 Global Competitiveness

Report, and was ahead of countries such as Canada, which was ranked 21st and Singapore, listed at the 23rd position.

“The impressive ranking is indicative of the fact that Jamaica has the ability to compete with the rest of the world,” the Minister said.