I take this opportunity to extend a warm welcome to each of you to the 18th meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development, and to Jamaica.

The Government of Jamaica is pleased to be hosting this week’s meeting. The provision of quality education and health services is critical to ensuring human and economic development for any country. In the reality of increasingly scarce resources and binding budget constraints, education and health must remain a priority on governments’ development agendas. The Government of Jamaica understands this, and has named education and health as priority areas in our recent budget presentation. At the Ministerial level, Minister Spencer and I are driving policies and programmes designed to respond to the needs of our country and improve efficiency, effectiveness and equity in the health and education sectors.

The Ministry of Education in Jamaica has enjoyed a successful and beneficial partnership with UNICEF in creating Child Friendly Schools (CFS), and on Friday morning, UNICEF will launch its Regional Child Friendly School initiative.

I encourage Ministers who have not yet pursued partnership with UNICEF’s Child Friendly Schools Programme to use this opportunity to do so. As Ministers, we must continue to establish a supportive policy framework, build partnerships and drive programmes necessary for improvement in health and education services.

This meeting provides a rich opportunity to document our successes, share best practices, and importantly to discuss and develop ideas, approaches and policy to addressing the challenges we continue to face in the health and education sectors.

The focus on the establishment of a Regional qualification framework, through Regional organisations such as the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) and National Accrediting Bodies and Training Agencies, provides the platform to strengthen our relationships and to help us to deepen the integration process. We note too that much emphasis is being placed on quality teacher education programmes and we are committed to sharing our experiences as we learn from each other. One of the experiences we would want to share with the rest of CARICOM is the benefit Jamaica has gained by being involved in World Skills International. This is an international body that promotes the development of vocational training and skills, and seeks to benchmark, vocational skills quality globally.

It is necessary for us to take stock of where we are individually, and to place each member’s strategies, progress and goals in the context of our regional human and social agenda. Given the difficult economic climate, it is increasingly important for us to work together and support each other at a regional level.

Once again, I welcome you to the COHSOD conference, and to Jamaica.

I look forward to fruitful discussions that will inform policy development and improvement in education and health sectors Regionally.

Thank you.