Dear Editor,
I hope that the President, his office or his erudite press liaison officer can help this nation by offering clear and lucid answers to the following:
First, according to GINA, the President two weeks ago stated that by now, the specifications and therefore advertisement for tenders for the instruments for the one laptop per family (OLPF) project should be ready. Are they ready for public information?
Second, initially we were given the impression that there would be a laptop for every family in Guyana, but we now hear it is for ‘poor’ families only. This purported shift is commendable. The question therefore is how will a poor family be determined?
May I add this caveat: a high government official boasts how much the PPP has done, so that poverty in Guyana has almost been eliminated. However, we have, according to the Office of the President, 90,000 poor families in Guyana, and if we assume a modest five people per family unit, the OP is admitting that there are 450,000 poor people out of a population of 750,000 – say 60% of us. So how was the number of 90,000 poor families arrived at? This is not consistent with the PPP government statement in 1993 that it had, “a viable programme for the reduction of poverty.”
Next, set aside the contention that a desktop would be the best bet for a family unit, is it now a netbook that will be given by the President? If so, how come we still hear of a laptop programme? Someone seems to be confused, or thinks that citizens are uninformed. With the government track record of dealing with contracts, this is cause for worry, so we await this tender process for laptops or netbooks, anxiously.
We’re told that if any of these poor families lose the instrument they’ll have to pay US$400. Now $80,000 is a lot of gravy for a poor family already burdened.
Final question: since this is a netbook, is it intended to be part of the state information machinery?
Yours faithfully,
Hamilton Green JP
