THE newly-introduced Ministry of Public Telecommunications, which is being headed by current Tourism Minister Catherine Hughes, has secured $821M for 2016 after the allocation was passed by the Committee of Supply in the House last Thursday. President David Granger had announced at year-end that Minister Hughes will now be named Minister for Public Telecommunications, while maintaining ministerial responsibility for tourism.
President Granger had explained that “The reason is that after seven months, we detected a gap that there is no single spokesperson in the National Assembly, a ministerial spokesperson, dealing with the digital economy [and] dealing with information technology. So we decided that it was necessary to have a minister responsible for information and communication technology.”
And last Thursday evening, as the estimates of the 2016 Budget were being discussed, the Ministry was allocated $821M after much scrutiny from the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP), particularly Irfaan Ali, former Housing Minister with responsibility for tourism.
Given the fact that the Ministry is a relatively new one, current expenditure had secured the bulk of a total of $785M while $36M will be directed towards capital expenditure. Of the $785M, $30M will be channeled towards Guyana’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, which has already been awarded some $300M.

IT CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE
Meanwhile, under capital expenditure, it was revealed by Minister Hughes that the Government plans to establish an Information Technology (IT) Centre of Excellence as one of several new projects that will be implemented to enhance the Information Communications Technology (ICT) sector in Guyana. According to Hughes, $10M will be spent on this new project.
She further explained that the centre will provide training for public sector ICT professionals to ensure the availability of an appropriate and highly skilled ICT workforce, equipped with healthy attitudes to meet the increasingly complex demands of the public and private sectors.
“We must, as a national imperative, utilise ICT to improve the delivery of Government services to all our citizens.  We must be able to process our various applications online quickly and get immediate responses to our queries via electronic and live helpdesks. Visits to Government offices to collect a form and having to return to drop it off must become a thing of the past,” the Minister told the National Assembly.
She added that in an attempt to support widespread access to information and E-Governance services, Government will spend a further $100M to repair and upgrade the Georgetown–Linden Fibre Optic Cable.
In keeping with this thrust to expand broadband connectivity and the integration of ministries, Government will also invest $140M to consolidate, monitor, maintain and extend the existing E-Governance fibre optic and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network around Georgetown and along the coast from Moleson Creek in Region Six, East Berbice, Corentyne to Charity in Region Two, Pomeroon/Supenaam.