TK Whyte
Thursday, May 24, 2007
PORTMORE, St Catherine - The opposition Jamaica Labour Party is promising to abolish cost sharing in high schools if it wins the election.
Opposition Spokesman on Finance Audley Shaw said this is an "irrevocable commitment", one that will cost the JLP government an additional $700 million in the budget.
"If elections are held before back to school in September, and we are successful at the polls, then our commitment begins at back to school in September where the cost sharing will be cut out of the public high school system," Shaw told a G2K forum at Southborough Primary School in St Catherine Tuesday. "[But] if the elections are held after September, then it will be triggered for the January 2008 term in the high schools. We do not intend to resile from that position."
Shaw said the JLP had made the commitment during the 2002 general elections, but claimed that the PNP - which introduced the cost sharing programme - promised to abolish it by 2005, but has failed to honour their commitment.
The system, he said, is a strain on parents' pocket, and the JLP will find the money to accommodate it.
"The US$43-million overrun on Sandals Whitehouse. that alone could have financed the cost sharing scheme for five years," he said. "That is a part of the solution to finding budgetary space for critical social projects like this."
Thursday, May 24, 2007
PORTMORE, St Catherine - The opposition Jamaica Labour Party is promising to abolish cost sharing in high schools if it wins the election.
Opposition Spokesman on Finance Audley Shaw said this is an "irrevocable commitment", one that will cost the JLP government an additional $700 million in the budget.
"If elections are held before back to school in September, and we are successful at the polls, then our commitment begins at back to school in September where the cost sharing will be cut out of the public high school system," Shaw told a G2K forum at Southborough Primary School in St Catherine Tuesday. "[But] if the elections are held after September, then it will be triggered for the January 2008 term in the high schools. We do not intend to resile from that position."
Shaw said the JLP had made the commitment during the 2002 general elections, but claimed that the PNP - which introduced the cost sharing programme - promised to abolish it by 2005, but has failed to honour their commitment.
The system, he said, is a strain on parents' pocket, and the JLP will find the money to accommodate it.
"The US$43-million overrun on Sandals Whitehouse. that alone could have financed the cost sharing scheme for five years," he said. "That is a part of the solution to finding budgetary space for critical social projects like this."
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