Dear Editor,

I am surprised and dismayed that Elaine Foster-Allen will be retiring from Jamaica’s public service so soon. She did so much sterling work for this country. This exceedingly bright, polished, humble and resourceful Jamaican critical thinker would excel at leadership and management anywhere on planet Earth; yet, she returned to the land of her birth and gave us her elegant best.

My experience with her spans our jointly serving on a major high school board; being the tutor of her daughter in A-QuEST, toiling with her in the rigorous and productive Rae Davies-led Education Reform Task Force appointed by PJ Patterson; interacting with her department while she astutely set up and managed the Education Inspectorate, and accessing the services of the Ministry of Education while she was its pointedly enlightened permanent secretary. Frankly, I was crestfallen when the Prime Minister’s Office summoned her upward to be PS to this country’s leader of Government. She shone there as well.

When the new Government was elected in February 2016, ministers must have haggled with each other to grab her to wisely lead their respective civil service teams. Health won.

This development reminds me of when Danville Walker was about to retire after leading the electoral office so effectively. My minister friend, Audley Shaw, famously lisped and hissed, “Don’t go too far!”

I, too, want to say to her: “Tan tuddy, wi need likkle more fram yuh; yuh courage, yuh integrity and your gifted cosmopolitan mind. Nuh go too far, Miss Lady!”

Dennis A Minott,

Port Antonio

Portland