Howard Mitchell’s recent reminder of the need to reconstruct Jamaica’s social fabric deserves serious attention. Speaking at the launch of the Heart of Jamaicans Survey conducted by Market Research Services Limited, he argued that while the country has made significant progress in stabilising its public finances through fiscal consolidation, it has lagged in implementing the sweeping social reforms needed to complement its economic turnaround over the past 15 years.

I agree wholeheartedly and would go further. Jamaica needs a broad-based, multi-stakeholder mechanism capable of building national consensus on the kind of society we aspire to create —much like the now-defunct Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), which successfully monitored the country’s economic reform programme across successive administrations between 2013 and 2024.

The EPOC model has been widely regarded as effective and internationally recognised as best practice. Similar frameworks have been applied in other areas, including education, through the Education Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC), and crime, via the Crime Monitoring and Oversight Committee (CMOC).