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'Gov't fails on health, education'
Published: Thursday | June 24, 2010 5 Comments and 0 Reactions
TWO AND a half years after being elected on a platform that included tuition-free high-school education and access to public health care without paying user fees, the Golding administration has failed to convince most Jamaicans of its ability to manage either sector effectively.
The administration fares a little better on its handling of the health sector but still gets a failing grade in a recently concluded Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson poll.
The survey found that only 37 per cent of Jamaicans believe the Golding administration has so far done a better job with education than the Simpson Miller government it replaced.
That is nine percentage points behind its predecessor, which enjoyed the backing of 46 per cent of Jamaicans who responded to the question of which government has done a better job with education.
Seventeen per cent of the respondents in the poll, conducted islandwide from April 24 and 25 and May 1, said they did not know which administration was a better performer on the health and education portfolios.
Illiteracy still a big problem
Improving the education sector was one of the key planks of the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) campaign in the lead-up to the 2007 general election which it won. Prime Minister Bruce Golding was quick to make good on a promise to scrap tuition fees for students
in secondary schools.
The Golding administration kept its promise to allocate a sizeable chunk of its annual budget to education, with $73.3 billion, or 14 per cent, of this year's Budget going to the sector.
However, this has failed to capture the imagination of Jamaicans who continue to point to overcrowded classrooms, dismal examination results and a high number of illiterate school leavers.
Similar criticisms were levelled at the People's National Party (PNP) government during its 18 years in power.
In the meantime, Jamaicans are not convinced that either the JLP or the PNP has effectively addressed the many problems facing the ailing health sector.
However, the Golding adminis-tration, which removed user fees from public hospitals, is marginally in front of the PNP in a statistical dead heat.
More than four in every 10 Jamaicans (42 per cent) believe the JLP government has done a better job with health care, while 39 per cent said the former PNP administration did a better job.
Nineteen per cent of respondents said they were unsure which of the two should get the thumbs up.
The Johnson poll was conducted with a sample size of 1,008, with a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent.
