For the second consecutive time at a conference of members of the island's diaspora, Prime Minister Andrew Holness lamented the low output of Jamaica’s workers and called for a “revolution” to lift national productivity.

This time, however, Dr Holness went further. He appealed for the intervention of Jamaicans living abroad in encouraging friends and family at home to work harder and more efficiently.

“Our value system must change,” he told attendees of last week’s 11th biennial Diaspora Conference in Montego Bay. “We must move from seeing work and service as servitude. We must move from victimhood to agency. We must believe that we have it in ourselves to take charge of our destiny and chart our course and achieve for ourselves.”