Jamaica’s

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has added his voice to the growing number of online

users who have spoken out following a Supreme Court ruling that a school did

not breach a child’s constitutional rights by denying her access for having

dreadlocks in 2018.

Friday’s ruling caused uproar on social media, prompting many to question what freedoms Jamaicans were celebrating as the island yesterday marked Emancipation Day – the abolition of African enslavement. Many considered the ruling discriminatory and a shot at black hair and hairstyles.

Holness,

in a statement, said “While we await

the written judgement to determine the basis of the ruling issued by our

Supreme Court, which by media reports, have suggested that the child’s

constitutional rights were not breached. This Government does not believe that

there should be any law, which could be interpreted to deny access to a citizen

merely on the basis of their hairstyle. We have, as a rights sensitive

Government, always maintained that our children must not be discriminated

against, nor deprived of their right to an education because of socio-economic

issues – such [as] inability to afford the school fees, or socio-cultural

issues such as their hairstyle.”

He

noted that the Ministry of Education has asserted over the years that schools’

grooming rules must be rights-based, and that no student is to be prevented

from admission or attendance at a public educational institution by reason of

non-conformity with a school rule prohibiting a particular hairstyle in

circumstances where the wearing of that hairstyle by the student is based on

religious or health reasons.

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Holness

continued, “In the present context, this Government believes it is time to

review and amend the Education Act to reflect a modern and culturally inclusive

position that protects our children from being barred from any educational

institution on the basis of wearing locs as an ordinary hairstyle irrespective

of religious reasons”.

He

said he is “acutely aware of the importance of this issue, especially in an era

of great social and political change that is awakening our consciousness of who

we are as a people,” stressing the importance that each child is treated fairly

within the nation’s educational system.