Other countries implemented laptop projects for children without national embarrassment over money

Feb 20, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project was a brilliant idea that became badly tainted by a government that believes transparency is a terminal disease to be avoided and that deflecting attention from government corruption is an art to be mastered.
I won’t go over all the details of the OLPF brouhaha, but suffice to say that this OLPF concept is not unique to Guyana, and in those countries where it was introduced there wasn’t all this political fuss or obfuscation of facts and figures, changing sources of financing or even bypassing of the legally required use of the tendering process.
Mr. Editor, my research revealed it was MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte who gave birth to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) concept, and the aim was to produce laptops at under US$100 for children. Unfortunately, the final production cost hit US$188, and not long after, Intel (the microchip makers) stepped in and has since been competing with OLPC to reach children.
According to the BBC News, in July 2008, Intel signed a deal with the Portugal government for 500,000 specially designed educational child-proof laptops to be given to all children, ages six through 10, with a subsequent project that targeted those between 10 and 16.
In August 2008, Negroponte’s OLPC project hit the small South Pacific nation of Niue, where 500 XO rugged, waterproof laptops were distributed to primary and high school students. In September 2008, Venezuela ordered one million remodeled Intel Classmate laptops for its school children, as part of its US$3B bilateral trade deal with Portugal.
In October 2009, Uruguay took advantage of the OLPC offer and 380,000 laptops were delivered to 362,000 students and 18,000 teachers. The Uruguay programme has cost the state US$260 (£159) per child, including maintenance costs, equipment repairs, training for the teachers and internet connection. The total figure represents less than 5% of the country’s education budget.
Also in late 2009, Chile’s former President Michelle Bachalet began limited delivery of free laptops to rural students, and last March, Peru signed a deal for 260,000 laptops from MIT’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme, while Argentina’s government delivered the first of 250,000 Intel Classmate laptops for students of technical high schools.
Brazil recently announced a fresh bid to buy 1.5 million laptops for elementary school children after its initial bid for 150,000 laptops for its One Computer Per Student programme in December 2007 never materialised.
“Latin America is way ahead of Asia, Africa and other regions of the world in one-to-one computer penetration in elementary schools,” says Rodrigo Arboleda, the MIT programme’s worldwide operations chief, who added that 85% of the programme’s laptops are going to the region. “Countries have realised that it works, and they are rushing not to be left behind.” (Source: BrazilMag).
So we can see from these various country references, the concept has taken root elsewhere, and Guyana, therefore, should not be left out. But unlike those countries where there was no problem with transparency from the ‘get-go’ all the way to the finish line, Guyana’s problem came when the government, as usual, failed to come clean with the people from the outset on actual costs and tendering.
One earlier report said the Jagdeo government will finance the project with a US$30M loan from China. This was followed by reports that reflected fudging of figures and fiddling with facts, and now the latest report is that the government will fund part of the project with G$1.8B and the Chinese will chip in with US$8M.
While it would make for interesting commentary for your newspaper to check the public’s response on what they know about the project, I felt truly embarrassed for Public Service Minister, Dr. Jennifer Webster, as she showed up in Parliament and touted the benefits of the project, noting with assured specificity that the price of the Lenovo laptops was G$295,000 each. Then after running into a firestorm of criticism over the exorbitant figure she had to return the next day with a correction of US$295 each.
Some may cite her mea culpa after her ‘honest mistake’, but others will take umbrage, arguing that the original figure was not a mistake but a blatant attempt to see if the government could get away with it. I cannot imagine Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh in such a humiliating predicament.
And instead of the  President acknowledging mistakes were made,  he turned his government’s bumbling fiasco into a war of words that pitted him against a former PNC minister and both the publisher and editor of Kaieteur News, whose only collective ‘sin’ was to help the public get a clearer picture of the actual costs involved in the project.
It was the same lack of transparency problem his government had with picking Makeshwar ‘Fip’ Motilall for the Amaila Fall road project, and now it is only 10% completed in the fourth month of an eight-month schedule.
Anyway, here is my primary question to the President of Guyana: Given that OLPC and Intel are competing to bring laptops to children at extremely low prices, did he or his government try to see if he/it could have gotten a better deal from either group compared to that which he/it got from the makers of Lenovo?
I ask this question very much mindful of the fact that the Chinese are funding a major part of the project, which means this is a win-win situation for China, as China gets to sell its laptops to Guyana while Guyana either must repay the Chinese loan or give China something of equal value from our country.
I want to follow up by asking the President – now the point man on the issue – whether the unit cost of US$295 for the Chinese laptops – as in the case of Uruguay’s OLPC computers – includes maintenance costs, equipment repairs, training for the teachers and internet connection. (Uruguay apparently paid US$188 per laptop plus an additional US$72 for the other support services).
By the way, of Notebook Review’s top ten laptops for January 2011, Lenovo takes the numbers 1 (Thinkpad X201), 3 (Thinkpad T410) and 9 (G560) spots, so there is no question about the quality of the Lenovo laptops, just as there is no question about the beneficial value of the project.
The question is how the Jagdeo regime took an otherwise beneficial project and impregnated it with questions about its actual cost and required tendering process and then, when confronted, became confrontational instead of contrite.
Did the regime set out to screw with the people in the OLPF project but wound up ‘doing’ itself, the same way it will find out with the dollars-extra-and-days-late Amaila Fall road project?
And if those who lose their US$295 laptops must pay US$400, then if the Amaila Fall project is not finished on time will ‘Fip’ Motilall be financially penalized, having already been paid a huge advance of taxpayers’ money?
Emile Mervin

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