Speech
Andrew Holness  ·  2026-09-10 18:35

JAMRROC Will Provide a Broader Pool of Advice and Expertise

And I want to be clear here on something because Jamaica could be considered a leading country in this region as it relates to social partnerships and we have use social partnerships for national benefit effectively whether it is [snorts] epoch ETO we have had so many and they have been to our our our advantage. uh I I know that sometimes the our partners in the social partnership may feel that you know government is going going at it by itself going alone not consulting enough. Uh that is something that we pay very close attention to and I want to assure the members of the social partnership that the government uh is committed to the social partnership and we see uh the establishment of Jamra as uh evidence of that commitment. But the the national social partnership that that we have uh I also want to commend them for their work uh and their support and advice. But social partnerships do not replace government and cabinet responsibility and authority. I think that needs to be to be said. Advisory bodies give the advice. Once the advice is given, the title has passed. The advice now belongs to the person that you have given the advice to. The duty of the advisor uh does not go into the political realm. So no one should be expecting uh Jamrock to be to become an advocate for the advice that it has given. that then crosses into now a different realm and a different responsibility. But JAMRA does have the responsibility to share the advice that it has given. That is the accountability and reporting duty. But ultimately government has to decide that's why you elected us that's why we went through elections. What happen if the advice is wrong and we followed it? You think anybody's going to go to Jamrock and say you gave wrong advice? [laughter] We in the cabinet are ministers of administration and policy development. We are not experts. We have experts who are employed to government who will also give us policy advice. people who we pay to do this. We have the NWA, we have the NWC, we have NEPA, we have the climate change division, we have all kinds of experts and they will advise us as well. We could get competing advice. I'm saying this because sometimes when these things get into the public domain, they can be politicized. See, N told um Jamrock told you this, but yet you did that. It's a very complex environment. But the beauty of having jamrock is that jamrock comes from a perspective that is not connected to the government. Very important. So it avoids this experts call group think. And we are we are all in the same group. We we have you know minister permanent secretary relationship. No matter what there's an influence, you know, the employed officer is going to want to say what he believes his minister wants to hear. You know, there's always that that risk and policies can go wrong as a as a result of that. So having Jamrock being there outside of government independent looking at other factors reduces that risk of an an internal narrow tunnel vision of what needs to be done. So ultimately the cabinet will have the benefit of broad advice. We will advise internally from government experts, advice from Jamrock. Our international partners, I'm certain will share their views and yes, I do read the papers. So I I do pay attention to what is is written. So yes, we are going to ensure that what we decide to do is broadly informed.