Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh says that government’s One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) programme will see 17,948 laptops scheduled for distribution this year.
Delivering his 2014 budget presentation yesterday, he said the OLPF will see a $2 billion reinvigoration from a budgeted $2 billion.
He said that last year, 9,052 laptops were distributed to beneficiaries in Regions 4 and 5 amounting to a total handout of 35,884 by the end of 2013. He said that 3,494 recipients completed basic proficiency training in the use of the computers and spreadsheet skills among other areas.
“Hundreds of children can now do homework from the comfort of their own homes instead of having to go to an internet café or other public facility”, he said. Complementing this, he said, are efforts to combine this with Information and Communication Technology in the learning process which has seen over 90% of secondary schools having functioning information technology labs. He said that before the end of this year, all secondary schools will have functioning IT labs.