Quality Service Must be the Collective Mantra of Govt. – Shaw

Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Audley Shaw, has said that for everyone involved in governance, quality service to the people, has to be the collective mantra.
He emphasised that the Government was committed to providing quality service for all. “This is what modern Government is all about; this is the partnership of paying your taxes and in return getting good leadership and good governance,” the Minister said.
Mr. Shaw was speaking at the official opening of the Portmore Tax Collectorate in St. Catherine on August 7.
“For everyone of us, every Member of Parliament, regardless of the colour of the stripe; every mayor and every ranking person in the parish council, quality service to the people has to be our collective mantra,” the Minister said.
Mr. Shaw pointed out that as a Government, “we have to listen to the people, we have to establish priorities, we have to make concessions, we have to put off some of the glorified projects, to deal with some of the bread and butter issues that are important to preserving our future and securing our children’s future.”
Among the critical decisions which the Government had to take, he said, were the abolition of cost sharing in education and user fees in the health service; the addition of 120,000 Jamaicans on the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), for assistance in mitigating the high cost of imported food; and the massive increase in the constituency fund from $4 million to $40 million a year, which all Parliamentarians would have to spend “judiciously,” in their constituencies.
Citing the successful tax amnesty, as another critical decision which the Government had to take, after consultation with stakeholder bodies, such as the accounting profession, Mr. Shaw shared a recent message he received from a relieved and satisfied businessman.
“He said he sleeps better at nights, He feels more comfortable and he does not have to worry about the Inland Revenue Department, threatening him in any way. He just wanted to say thanks for the opportunity provided by the tax amnesty, for him to straighten his affairs,” the Minister said.
“At the end of the day, we must be able, as tax payers, to say yes, I like how my tax dollars are being spent. I can see it on the roads, I can see it in the faces of the little children, I can see it in the smiling patients at the hospital, I can see it by the clean gullies that are running through my districts and we don’t have to be fogging every evening with mosquito foggers, because we are doing enough preventive maintenance, to ensure that we are living in a quality environment,” he added.