FREENESS BREEDS PROBLEMS

Mar 23, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A not too smart man went into a store that sells curtains. He said to the salesgirl, “I would like to buy a pair of pink curtains.
The salesgirl assured the man that they had a large assortment of pink curtains. She showed the not too smart man several patterns, but the man seemed to have a hard time choosing.
Finally the salesgirl picked out a pink floral print and recommended this to the man. The man agreed.
The salesgirl then asked what size curtains was needed. To which the not too smart man answered, “Fifteen inches.”
“Fifteen inches?” asked the salesgirl, “that sounds very small. What room are they for?”
The man replied, “Oh, they are not for any room. They are for my computer monitor?”
The surprised salesgirl replied, “But Sir, computers do not have curtains.”
To which the man answered, “Helloooooooo – I’ve got Windows!”
A tender is out for the procurement of computers for the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) Project. It is not yet known whether the winning bid will throw in a few blinds as part of the package. What is certain is that the firm winning this massive contract to supply some 90,000 computers will have to provide support services, inclusive of repairs and maintenance.
This will be a major drawback and will limit bidders. Already one person who had originally shown an interest in bidding has indicated to this newspaper that he will not be submitting a bid because he believes that in such contracts a one-year warranty would have to be provided, and this he believed would present problems in a country like Guyana where computer literacy is low and where the population is spread over hundreds of miles.
To provide a one-year warranty will not be easy. A number of persons who will receive these laptops would never in their life have had experience in using a computer, and therefore there is a high likelihood of these computers having to be sent for minor tweaking because of misuse or lack of sufficient knowledge about using these instruments.
Some parts may go broken, and some may even crash because of viral infiltration or one of the many other problems that affect computers and which require a visit to the service store.
Secondly, when the computers experience problems there will be need to have skilled technicians to fix them. Spares will be needed to be kept in stock.
No company offering a one-year warranty is going to be willing to meet these demands, not for the price that the government would be willing to pay. The supply of support services will require the establishment of tens of repair and service centres, which in turn will necessitate significant investments by the company offering the warranty. These costs would have to be factored into the bid.
There are not sufficient local companies available and not sufficient trained and skilled computer technicians available locally to outsource this aspect of the warranty.
Even if a company is found that would be willing to establish computer service stations throughout Guyana, would such a company be able to effectively provide the required level of service for 90,000 computers distributed over such a large area ranging from the far Rupununi to the North West area.
The One Laptop Per Family Project sounds like a good idea and there are thousands of families out there who would love to have their kids obtain these computers because they see the benefits that their kids can obtain from having these computers. However, it is equally clear that the OLPF Project is poorly-conceived and will present major challenges to get going.
When these things are mentioned, the government gets all defensive and accuses critics of being opposed to the project.
Well there are just reasons for such opposition, since even the system for deciding who will obtain these computers is going to be riddled with controversies.
Already some persons who can easily afford to buy laptops for their family have decided that they are waiting for the distribution to begin and they are confident that they will be lucky in obtaining one of the units. The worse thing that any government can do is to distribute things free. There will be persons lining up not for one computer per family but for one computer per every member of the family.
This project will breed its own controversies.
Those who feel that this project will enhance the ruling party’s fortunes had better think again, because given the way people behave when there is freeness, there is going to be a great deal of problems.

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