The Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company (GT&T) continues to combine its contractual obligation to expanding and modernizing the telecommunications sector infrastructure in Guyana with a corporate commitment to utilizing the technological and other resources at its disposal to improve the quality of education in Guyana, according to Allison Parker, the company’s Public Rela-tions Officer.
And according to Parker GT&T is targeting individuals and institutions that are limited in their access to the resources necessary to enhance their social and intellectual lives and to improve the quality of service that they provide.
Beginning in September this year GT&T is providing four scholarships annually for students to pursue studies in engineering or information technology at the University of Guyana. Parker said that the key criterion for receiving the awards was that applicants’ academic credentials must reflect a potential to succeed but that their circumstances must provide a clear indication of a financial inability to realize that potential. “The principle behind our scholarship programme is that material circumstances ought not to be a barrier to the realization of potential,” Parker said.
The GT&T scholarship award programme provides for tuition fees and scholarship awardees also benefit from paid work study attachments with the company.
Parker told Stabroek Business that four years ago GT&T had embarked on a programme of equipping “low end schools” with computers and internet facilities. The President’s College and the Government Technical Institute are among other educational institutions that have benefited from gifts of DSL internet technology. She disclosed that the Mc Kenzie High School was among the institutions that would shortly be benefiting from similar gifts from GT&T. “The significance of these donations is that they have provided an opportunity for students who may not otherwise have had the opportunity at this juncture to access the technology to be able to do so,” Parker said.
Meanwhile Parker disclosed that the company will shortly be providing the Critchlow Labour College with computers and internet technology worth around $2m. She said that the equipment was likely to be installed by the end of October.
GT&T has also donated $10m worth of equipment including 57 computers to the University of Guyana.
Asked about the company’s policy in relation to the sponsorship of sports and entertainment events Parker said that she envisaged that the company could review its policy in relation to such donations.
She declined, however, to comment on reports that have surfaced in recent months regarding the failure by some recipients of private sector sponsorship to properly account for funds made available to them.