MORE than 600 public sector employees who have served 25 years and more were on Wednesday honoured for long and dedicated service.

They were presented with medals at the Jamaica Civil Service Long Service Awards ceremony held at King’s House under the theme ‘Raising the Bar, Strengthening the Bond’.

Making the presentations were Governor General Sir Patrick Allen; Prime Minister Andrew Holness; Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke; minister of state in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service Zavia Mayne; cabinet secretary and head of the public service Audrey Sewell; and Member of Parliament for St Andrew South Western Dr Angela Brown Burke, who represented Opposition Leader Mark Golding.

Dr Clarke, in his address, commended the honourees for their dedicated service.

“I first want to congratulate awardees here today for your exemplary service which, for many, would have constituted a great part of their working lives. Today we pause and reflect as we honour you for, in most cases, your decades of service to Jamaica through the civil service. We honour you, we thank you, and we celebrate you,” he said.

Underscoring the importance of the public sector to national development, Dr Clarke said the Government is “making the largest investment in the civil service in a very, very long time”.

“The people of Jamaica surely expect that as a consequence of this investment, indeed we will raise the bar… What we speak to is a civil service that is more cohesive and one that acts with efficiency in order to get the job done,” he said.

Noting that Jamaica’s development is inextricably linked to raising the levels of productivity, he said that “this will depend on a public bureaucracy driven by a civil service that pays attention to time and costs. Our investment in the human capital of the civil service will be followed by investments in technology that can enable the goals that we seek”.