KINGSTON, Jamaica — Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke today launched the Marcus Garvey Public Sector Graduate Scholarship Programme which will offer 30 graduate scholarships each year for the next five years for public sector employees.

The estimated cost of the programme over the five-year period is $1 billion, the ministry said.

The scholarships will be tenable at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona and the University of Technology (UTech) in Jamaica; Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University in the USA; and King’s College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

The Marcus Garvey Public Sector Graduate Scholarship, as first announced by Minister Clarke during his 2020/21 budget presentation in March, was conceptualised as a strategic human capital development initiative. It allows public sector employees pursue graduate studies in programmes of study aligned with Jamaica’s national priorities and strategic objectives.

“To the best of my knowledge, this is the largest and most ambitious graduate scholarship programme in Jamaica’s history,” said Clarke. 

“As we strive towards greater levels of efficiency in our public service, and by extension a better Jamaica, the Government of Jamaica is investing in building the human capital of our public service,” he added.

The ministry said the programme is the first of its kind to offer fully-financed scholarships exclusively for public sector employees. It added that it will be used as a tool to help attract, motivate and retain qualified staff in the public service.        

“The administration of the scholarship includes a mechanism to ensure that recipients commit to adequate time in the Government service to allow them to employ, and transfer where applicable, their new skills and qualifications,” the finance ministry said.

President of the Jamaica Civil Service Association, O’Neil Grant, in endorsing the programme, encouraged his membership to apply and use the scholarship as an opportunity to take bigger steps in their professional development.

The scholarship selection committee will be chaired by the Governor-General, Sir Patrick Allen, while the technical secretariat, which will set the strategic direction for continued development and relevance of the scholarship, will be based in the Strategic Human Resource Management Division of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service.