Dr. Denis Lowe

Minister of the Environment, Water Resources and Drainage, Dr. Denis Lowe, has placed on record his intention to lead a “seamless” Ministry.

Speaking at a recent meeting between Environment Department heads and representatives of the Sanitation Services Authority and the Solid Waste Management Unit, departments under the aegis of that Ministry, Dr. Lowe called on officers to work assiduously to ensure that there was cohesion within the new Ministry.

Citing a vision for a “tightly inter-dependent system”, which creates synergy and gives the Ministry focus, Dr. Lowe said: “I am urging heads and leaders of projects to work closely with the Permanent Secretary and myself, as we seek to bring a system together, parts of which, I am understanding, have worked autonomously. Anytime you have a whole and you have autonomous functioning parts you are courting the emergence of chaos, leakage of information and duplication of effort.

“One of the things I hope to do in this Ministry is to continue to support efforts to ensure that all the assistance that is required is accorded to leaders; whether it be human resources or financial, so that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing – from the (Harrisons) Caves in St.Thomas – all the way down to us here (Ministry’s Headquarters) at Hincks Street,” he underlined.

Dr. Lowe told his department leaders that critical operating standards were necessary for the attainment of the Ministry’s vision, which included transparency, integrity, accountability, creativity, dedication and innovation.

“I believe that accountability is at the top of the game and that has its way of impacting on transparency …with your cooperation we are going to run a lean, but not stringent operation, where resources are brought to bear appropriately and effectively so that we can achieve our objectives,” he noted.

Dr. Lowe made it clear that while officers would be encouraged to be creative and excellent in all their endeavours, concomitantly, efforts would be made to ensure that such desirable outputs were appropriately rewarded.

“We are serious about the environment, the public education we offer to citizens and serious about the results that impinge on our vision,” he said.

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