By Sue-Ann Wayow
GOVERNMENT’s promised distribution of 7,000 laptops to pupils and children is nothing more than an “insult” and even “satanic”.
The United National Congress (UNC) in a press release on Tuesday said the giving out of the laptops announced by Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly was a “PNM Pappyshow (and) Politics of the very worst kind.”
The UNC stated, “The PNM (People’s National Movement) have no intention of fixing our education system, since they were the ones who systematically and willfully destroyed it, as collateral damage in their divisive and destructive power games.”
The party that led the People’s Partnership Government from 2010 to 2015 had incorporated the distribution of laptops to Form One pupils entering secondary school.
It was launched in 2010 at the Success Laventille Secondary School by then prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
The UNC stated that over her term of office, 95,000 laptops were provided to students, and 4,000 to teachers, principals and school supervisors.
However, when the PNM came into power in 2015, that initiative was scrapped.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley during the 2015 general election campaign did not agree with the idea then.
Also in 2020, before the month before he was re-elected back into office, Dr Rowley speaking during a PNM meeting said, “The only thing that came out of that programme was that the supplier/s of laptops became very rich. You know they come back now and putting that in their manifesto that they going to go back and do it again?”
He said it was “a programme that has been deemed to be a failure.”
It was only when the Covid-19 pandemic hit that it was necessary that children get electronic devices to do their schoolwork and Dr Gadsby-Dolly called on the private sector to assist with the donation of laptops to pupils. The Adopt-A-School programme was later launched.
The UNC stated, “Now, more than two years later, at the beginning of this school term, she proudly announced that 7,000 laptops will be distributed ‘from this week’ to students who are ‘means tested’.”
It stated, “This is a slap in the face to students and their parents who have had to face such severe challenges purposely imposed on them by Rowley and his ministers. These 7,000 laptops will not at all fill the massive hole dug out by her Prime Minister, which has threatened the future of two generations of students and their families.”
Dr Rowley must now explain why he has changed his mind about the distribution of laptops, the party said.
The UNC stated, “There is obviously only one answer. This is cynical politics of the cruellest sort, sacrificing our children’s futures, solely for the pursuit of his own political power. Rowley even made his supporters repeat that the Government giving their children free laptops was a bad thing, even though he knew otherwise. Nothing can be more satanic than that.”
