–Minister Hughes gives gov’t thumbs up for performance

MINISTER of Public Telecommunications, Ms Catherine Hughes, has given the APNU+AFC Administration the thumbs up for the significant progress it has made in just a little over two years in office.

“It has felt like a 100-metre dash,” in spite of the many hurdles it has had to overcome, she told the Department of Public Information (DPI) recently, when asked to rate the government’s performance to date.

She explained that upon taking office, the government not only inherited a number of challenges that should have been dealt with by the previous administration, but that when ministers took up ther respective appointments, they too found that the necessary infrastructure and policies were not in place, which, in turn, put a further strain on the government.

“That has made the work a lot more difficult,” Minister Hughes said, adding:
“We had challenges in sugar that really should have been tackled 10 to 15 years ago, so, of course, today we are having to deal with that.”
She, however, said that in spite of the many constraints, the current administration is equal to the task. “We are up for the challenge, and despite the propaganda that is constantly hurled at us, I think we have done a fairly good job…”

She bolstered her argument by pointing to her ministry’s many achievements in the two short years, such as being able to connect 95 secondary schools and 37 other institutions to the eGovernment Network, among them the various regional offices, the Guyana School of Agriculture, and the Cyril Potter College of Education.
She also listed among her ministry’s significant achievements, their being able to hook up 53 government ministries to the eGovernment Network; install 49 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hubs; and providing as many as 8,944 teachers with laptops so far.