Lieutenant-General Rocky Meade, chief of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) officially handed over command of the Caribbean Military Academy (CMA) to Brigadier Radgh Mason, who will now preside over the institution as president.
The change of command was traded between the two high-ranking officers during a symbolic ceremony at the JDF’s Up-Park Camp headquarters in Kingston on Friday (July 10).
General Meade, Chief of Defence Staff, previously functioned as CMA Vice Chancellor and President since its May 2019 inception.
In his remarks, the JDF chief expressed his confidence the military university, the first of its kind in the English-speaking Caribbean, will continue to grow and impact the lives of many Jamaican and regional soldiers.
“We can create a military tertiary institution that issues military degrees and tertiary degrees”, Gen Meade asserted.
The new president and Brigadier Commander Radgh Mason expressed that, “my mission and motivation is to do everything I can now, while in uniform to provide a safe environment for the Jamaican youth.”
The mission of the Caribbean Military Academy is to provide accredited and quality professional military education to identified military, law enforcement and selected civilian personnel, particularly from developing and otherwise emerging states around the globe.
General Meade, who announced the institution in 2018, said then that the establishment of the CMA was another stage in the JDF’s continued evolution.
CMA, the academic institutional arm of the JDF, currently operates six centres of excellence which provide a broad range of training courses to developing militaries and para-military organisations across the region and around the world.
