Jamaica Signs Agreement To Accept Healthcare Workers From Ghana | RJR News
As the country battles mounting pressure in the public health system, Kingston and Accra have signed a new agreement that will allow Ghanaian healthcare workers to begin working locally.
The arrangement comes as Jamaica continues to shore up its healthcare workforce following the exit of a large pool of Cuban professionals who worked under the now defunct medical cooperation programme, which lasted 50 years.
The Jamaica-Ghana arrangement was discussed during President John Dramani Mahama’s four-day state visit to Jamaica.
During a media conference after bilateral talks, President Mahama said there will be a further exchange of human capital that will boost the education sector.
“We’re also happy that we signed the agreement and soon we’ll have a number of Ghanaian health professionals coming to work in the Jamaican health system. But we’ve also talked about exchanges where we bring Jamaican health professionals to Ghana to train and come back home to support the health system. We’re looking at exchange of teachers, physics and maths teachers, science teachers and all that. So these are all areas that we can activate,” said the Ghanaian president.
Several bilateral arrangements were discussed with a focus on moving both countries towards economic independence.
The two heads of government discussed cross-country investments, expanding manufacturing and exporting.
President Mahama said both governments are also focused on improving air services and defence cooperation.
“Jamaica is an important maritime hub and Ghana is also an important maritime hub. And I do believe that with the work that we are all doing, we should soon have direct air services coming to the Caribbean from West Africa, and then also direct transshipments to move goods and services across our two regions,” he noted.
And amid talks between the two countries about reparatory justice, Prime Minister Dr. Andrew Holness said the Jamaican government will soon make representation to the British crown as the country pursues its own bid for reparations.
“We have passed an our Parliament a resolution, which we will now perfect by presenting that resolution, that petition to the king. And we expect that there will be some responses which will further advance the reparation cause. So I’m very pleased with the several efforts which are jointly working together to change the global perspective,” said Dr. Holness who was also speaking during Monday morning’s media briefing.