MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Andrew Holness has reaffirmed that a government led by him will establish a national health insurance scheme and remove fees in schools up to secondary level.

“I want to commit to you today that the Jamaica Labour Party, when we return to Government, will make it easier for you to educate your children,” Holness announced at the latest of the JLP’s ‘Poverty to Prosperity’ series in Mandeville last week.

“We will remove, as we did in 2007, tuition fees and any other fee by any other name,” Holness told supporters.

“We make a commitment to the young people of this country who have fulfilled the social contract of going to school, become qualified, stayed out of trouble, but have no work at the end of that period… I make a commitment that we will develop and implement a system of national apprenticeship to ensure that our young school leavers will have a chance to work and learn and earn,” he added.

He said the JLP believed in “free tuition to the secondary level, and as our country grows and the economy expands we will move that to the tertiary level. That is our commitment, to expand the rights of citizens to education”.

Regarding health care, Holness is proposing an insurance pool that would attract contributions proportional to earnings which, he said, would be similar to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS).

“The wise government shares the cost according to how you can manage it. We propose to establish an insurance pool to help to fund the health care system where you can contribute according to how you earn. In the same way you contribute to the NIS, the same way we ask you to contribute to manage the health care system so it can deliver to you when you turn up at the hospital,” said Holness.

The Opposition leader said the proposed policies on education and health were meant to strengthen the family structure which, he suggested, was under attack because of the approach by the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) Government.

Noting that “crime is making our economy difficult, crime is taking away our productivity, crime is destroying our family, crime is taking away our loved ones, crime is messing our future as a country”, Holness said any government run by him would return the country to law and order.

And Holness reiterated that changes regarding Jamaica’s final court of appeal and removal of the contentious buggery law should be decided by referendum.

“If there is to be any change to what we understand to be the fundamental definition of our society, then any such change must be brought to the public in a grand referendum,” said Holness.

“If the CCJ (Caribbean Court of Justice) is to become the final Court of Appeal [replacing the British Privy Council], if the Buggery Act is to be removed, then all those issues must be brought to the people of Jamaica in a grand referendum, but the Jamaica Labour Party recognises that there is a duty for tolerance, to protect and preserve the human rights of every single Jamaican.

“There must never be any discrimination against any Jamaican because of race, class, creed, or sexuality,” the Opposition leader added.