GENERAL Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Clement Rohee, has charged that “suspicious moves” by the APNU+AFC Administration convey the impression that Government is secretly handing over laptops from the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) programme to friends and cronies of the coalition.
Speaking at a PPP weekly press conference held at its headquarters at Freedom House on Robb Street, Georgetown, the General Secretary said the PPP “denounces” the decision by the David Granger Administration to bring an abrupt end to the “revolutionary” One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project, which had been initiated while the PPP was in office.
Regrettably, Rohee could not produce evidence to support his claims.
Officially launched on January 21, 2011 under then President Bharrat Jagdeo at the then Guyana International Conference Centre, the OLPF programme was expected to furnish 90,000 families each with a laptop, thereby providing economic opportunities for households; but reportedly only 55,000 families benefited from the project. The final batch of approximately 10,000 laptops is due to arrive in Guyana shortly.
WELCOME MOVE
Just last week, Governance Minister Raphael Trotman assured there would be no scrapping of the project, as was reported in sections of the media, but there would rather be a possible re-organising of the distribution criteria, which will see teachers and schools benefiting from receipt of the laptops, to the ultimate benefit of communities.
Teachers have welcomed this move by the Administration.
Providing the PPP/C’s rationale for the birth of such a project, Rohee reasoned that the programme was “conceptualised and implemented with the visionary aim of to bridge the information and telecommunication gap”, not only between those on the coastlands and the interior of Guyana, but also between Guyana and the rest of the rapidly advancing technological world.
Rohee reasoned that, with a computer in the home, an enabling environment is created for parents and family members to become more involved in their children’s school work.
Additionally, he noted that possession of a laptop would enhance research and learning approaches in academia and general social studies, and it is expected that the achievement gaps between children of poor or working class parentage and those of parentage from high-income brackets would be narrowed.
Rohee stressed that this project was a critical component of the new frontier development path that will drive a new and more prosperous Guyana. He took a jab at the APNU+AFC Government, arguing that the Granger Administration is still “fighting tooth and nail” to paint a picture of this people-centred initiative as being a “pappy show”.
He also said that despite Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, having stated that the initiative was a “massive fraud”, the initiative was not highlighted for a forensic audit, even while forensic audits are currently ongoing by the Government.
Accordingly, the PPP is urging the Government to explain the methodology it intends to use for distribution of the laptops to teachers, schools and communities.
The Government, Rohee said, must reveal its “well-thought-out arrangement” for the 10,000 laptops soon to arrive. “They need to explain the rationale for distribution; if they’re going to distribute them in communities, what are the criteria? How are they going to select the communities? What yardstick are they going to use to determine which communities are going to get laptops? What is the scientific basis under which these laptops are going to be distributed?” Rohee questioned.
RE-ORGANISE
But, last week, in a News Source report, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, sought to assured Guyanese that the Administration had no plans to scrap the programme, which has already benefited thousands of Guyanese.
With the Administration recently handing out termination letters to some 50 of the 62 staffers at the OLPF secretariat, Harmon offered that the project was stalled and has now been linked with the E–Governance Project, under which the 12 remaining OLPF staff will work.
“It didn’t seem to be a well-thought-out arrangement, but the new Administration intends to do that. The President has already said he sees schools being the ones to benefit, where the focus is on education and getting computers into the schools,” Harmon told News Source.
He said two batches of approximately 10,000 laptops have already arrived over time, and have been distributed overtime. The State Minister explained further that the second batch of computers, which was a gift from a Chinese company, had “serious problems” and, as a consequence, hundreds of those computers could not have been distributed.
By Ravin Singh
