-Minister Nadir
Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir, who also holds Cabinet’s responsibility for the ‘One Laptop Per Family’ (OLPF) project has maintained that government is on schedule with plans for an October distribution of the laptops. The project will see 90,000 families benefiting from a computer, a project that is the brainchild of President Bharrat Jagdeo.
This disclosure was made during a press briefing yesterday at the Minister’s Stabroek Office, to address several issues, including re-tendering of bids for the project and accusations made by proprietors of Giftland Office Max of the OLPF providing ‘flawed advice’ to the government.
Minister Nadir, in providing an update on the project, said that 44,000 applications have been received by the OLPF secretariat since the closure of submission of application forms. Already 14,000 applications have been entered into the project’s database.
“We have started looking at identifying the learning hubs and so far we have visited over 206 hubs in all three counties of Guyana, because we are not only giving people this hardware, but are equipping them with the knowledge to use the hardware,” Minister Nadir added.
While a training exercise will be done aimed at ensuring that every member of the household develops computer skills, a verification process will also be conducted to ensure that information provided by applicants is accurate.
Thus far, 291 potential trainers have already gone through the scrutiny of orientation as the secretariat is now in the process of finalising agreements, which recipients will be required to follow.
“Already we have a draft of the agreement, since many of the hubs are not government institutions, but are NGOs and so we are going to have a hub agreement with them. We will also be looking at inputting serial numbers of individual equipment into the database and how we can trace the computers,” he said.
Minister Nadir added that the verification exercise is also important, since it is government’s aim to have the vulnerable sections in society benefit from the programme which has since received overwhelming response from the public.
The visionary programme seeks to empower poor and working class Guyanese with the modern means of enhancing their education, livelihood and personal ambitions, through the use of computer technology.
It will see 50,000 laptops being delivered to priority groups across the country during phase one, while successful applicants will be required to commit to a specific number of hours of community work through a mutually agreed community programme. (GINA)
October distribution of Gov’t laptops on schedule
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