The Government on Tuesday enshrined the legacy of former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller by naming the Ministry of Labour and Social Security headquarters in the capital city in her honour and announcing that the Western Children and Adolescent Hospital now being built in St James will also carry her name.

The twin tributes crown a long and distinguished public service career for Simpson Miller, who shattered a major political barrier in 2006 when she became the first woman to lead the People’s National Party (PNP) and was subsequently sworn in as Jamaica’s seventh head of Government, serving from 2006 to 2007 and 2012 to 2016.

“It was always the intent, and I expressed that directly to family, and internally we have also discussed it, and I may even have said it in passing, that the hospital should be named… in her honour,” Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness said.