Some issues with OLPF

Feb 26, 2013 Editorial

Two years ago Guyana launched what it called its One Laptop Per Family programme. The aim was to provide 90,000 laptops across Guyana in three years. This programme was seen as a step to help Guyana move into the technological age in keeping with the rest of the world.
Indeed, just about everything is done on the computer these days. There is internet banking which has now moved to the level of mobile banking; there is the use of the computer to pay just about every available bill; and people now make purchases from their computer. Gone are the days when the more affluent households bought the large volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica which was the prime reference document because it contained information about everything possible under the sun. All the research information could be accessed from the confines of the most ordinary home that possesses a computer.
Learning is simplified because the computer could be a most willing teacher. In fact, in the developed world there is distance learning facilitated by the computer. With programmes such as Skype and the other visual connection facilities people could be in another continent and share knowledge. And if this sounds farfetched, there was the case of doctors in one continent seeking the assistance of others during a sophisticated surgical intervention.
It was with these things in mind that many people welcomed this Government initiative. We are short of teachers in many skilled areas. Mathematics and the sciences are the worst hit in the education system. With the few teachers around one can imagine the impact of the computer, especially since Guyana launched a distance education programme.
However, all does not seem to be well with this programme. There were initial complaints about the unit cost of the computer. These were netbooks, only capable of accessing the internet and to have them cost some US$250 per seemed exorbitant. Similar netbooks were being retailed at just over US$150 per unit. And there was a view that this should have been the cost of the computers supplied by the government.
Indeed providing the computers could not have been a cheap programme. It was supposed to cost the country US$27 million. But the government got some special concessions from the Chinese manufacturers. They donated a few hundred computers to the programme and they spoke about setting up an assembly plant in Guyana. Again the OLPF was proving more than beneficiary.
To construct an assembly plant in Guyana was actually bringing employment to Guyana. The other benefit was that the shipping cost for the computers would have been removed from the cost of the total package.
At the same time the government was laying a US$30 million cable to transmit its own bandwidth to facilitate among things, e-governance and the OLPF. Suddenly these two programmes seem to have run out of steam. For one, the OLPF programme which was initially a programme that would be fuelled by applications from the people suddenly found itself mired in problems. Political considerations saw some households getting as many as five computers.
There were instances of the police being asked to intervene into the irregularities but there have been no prosecutions. Again the political directorate has risen to the support and defence of its own. We have not failed to notice that some of the people administering the programme have been sent home pending an investigation into a fraud. More than 100 of the computers disappeared from the headquarters.
The cable programme is mired in problems. Something as simple as laying cable seems to be a technological nightmare to the extent that almost one year after that cable should have been in the capital and ready for use, it is still nowhere near to being installed.
The worst of all is that schools in the hinterland are ignored. These are the schools that do not have the best teachers; instead they have substandard facilities. The computers would have helped them through the distance education programme. The distribution package has not reached them. But it did reach a few pensioners and those government departments where special people work.