Laptop roll-out begins

Oct 09, 2016 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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Minister of Public Telecommunications, Cathy Hughes, was on hand last Thursday morning in the auditorium of Queen’s College (QC), to assist in the distribution of ‘Great Wall’ laptop computers to the students who scored in the top one percentile at the National Grade Six Assessment in 2015. After the results had been released and tabulated in August last year, President David Granger had given a commitment to those students to make laptop computers available to them.
The group of 148 students who now attend Queen’s College and Bishops High School, were presented with their long awaited computers. QC’s Headmistress in a poignant charge to the recipients quoted the late Malcolm X who had said: “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”. She expressed sincere gratitude to President Granger, the People of China, and the eGovernment Agency which operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Public Telecommunications.
Minister Hughes when it came her turn at the podium, said to the students, teachers and Education officials, “We have a mandate to develop this country like it’s never been done before. You (students) are the ones who will really deliver on this mandate”. She challenged them to utilize the technologies already available as well as those not yet on the market to keep on increasing their knowledge, learning and growing in the Arts, Technology, Sciences, Sports, Geography and History to turn themselves into well rounded students.
“Let’s move ahead and change this world,” she exhorted them.
The Computer Laboratories at Queen’s College and Bishops High School were just two of the 100+ secondary schools on Guyana’s coastland from Corentyne to Charity that were recently connected to the LTE and fibre optic eGovernment networks. Over 50 Community centers along the same pathway have also been connected to assist communities – children, young professionals, adult professionals and entrepreneurs with homework, research, and social interaction around the world.
This is a giant step forward in the government’s all-encompassing programme to raise the national level of digital literacy. The connectivity project is but a fraction of the overall programme being devised and executed by the Ministry of Public Telecommunications and its execution arm, the eGovernment Agency.
This Agency began a countrywide programme earlier in 2016 to set up ICT hubs in urban and rural community centers in towns and villages. They started out in Berbice as far away as Liverpool, Corentyne and Baracara up the Canje Creek. They set up community hubs on the East Coast and East Bank of Berbice and Demerara, and in the mining town of Linden. The technicians and engineers are working so fast, moving very quickly to carry out the mandate that was handed to this Ministry, i.e. to create a knowledge-based, ICT-enabled society in the shortest possible time.
That Presidential mandate, issued in January 2016, required that the Ministry enfolds the National Data Management Authority, the eGovernment Unit, the National Frequency Management Unit, the Public Utilities Commission and the Guyana Post Office Corporation into a cohesive whole. The objective has been to create and install appropriate ICT-related infrastructure, devise training programmes for citizens to enable as many Guyanese as possible to function competently in this world of e-health, e-commerce, e-learning.
The Ministry of Education is intent on distributing the laptop computers to its teachers in the shortest possible time. The well crafted Education system is managed through a cluster system, and it is through this system that the computers will be distributed in this first roll out to more than 4,000 teachers in public service who have met the specifications.
The previous One Laptop Per Family programme that was devised and used by the previous government was renamed, refocused and refined into the One Laptop Per Teacher distribution programme fashioned by the incumbent administration. The computers have been loaded with data and information provided by the Ministry of Education e.g. curriculum guides, instructional resources, text books, and marking schemes.
We now stand at a starting point filled with promise. Like everything about Information Communication Technology, every turn along that road to digital competency opens us up to new possibilities, new ways to ensure that every person in Guyana has access to the worldwide web.
We’re looking forward to the imminent expansion programme that will extend the fibre optic and LTE networks into inland communities, into new towns like Bartica, Mabaruma and Mahdia, into long existing communities like Kwakwani and Orealla on the Berbice River, and Hogg Island in the Essequibo.
It seems as if most countries of the World have been turned on to the absolute value of an educated citizenry. It was Nelson Mandela who said to his South African compatriots, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world”. For us, education is the gateway to active participation in the development of the world at an equally fast pace. We have got to catch up, then we have to keep up. We could only keep up when we have the same tools, the same platforms, the same opportunities.
That is our main objective, and with all things being equal, that is what we will accomplish.

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